Quotes from John Ehle

Only the strong knew what suffering was. The weak never found themselves in the strong webs; the strong man was the one who found himself day and night bound and struggling, so that the work he did, the plotting and the owning and the buying, the decisions he made—and in a large family there had been many to make—were often hard-fibered.

A tree didn't yield to his strength of will or daring, but only to the continual cutting of his ax.