Well-matured and well-disciplined talent is always sure of a market, provided it exerts itself; but it must not cower at home and expect to be sought for. There is a good deal of cant, too, in the whining about the success of forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are passed over with neglect. But it happens often that those forward men have that valuable quality of promptness and activity, without which worth is a mere inoperative property.
      A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion. Endeavor to make your talents convertible to ready use, prompt for the occasion, and adapted to the ordinary purposes of life; cultivate strength rather than gracefulness; in our country it is the useful, not the ornamental, that is in demand.
      ~Washington Irving, letter to Pierre Paris Irving (nephew), 1824 December 7th[the dog/lion line being a less fatal twist of Ecclesiastes 9:4 —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]