Clearing out old saved web sites and found this - remarkable...
I think of one of the greatest books ever written, Pilgrim's Progress, written by John Bunyan during a six-month imprisonment in Bedford Jail. Daniel Defoe in prison wrote Robinson Crusoe. Sir Walter Raleigh, after he fell from favor with the queen, wrote his History of the World during a thirteen-year prison sentence. The great poet Dante worked and died in exile, but while there, his contributions to humankind were immeasurable. Cervantes, who wrote Don Quixote in a Madrid jail, was so poor he could not even get paper for his life's writing, but used scraps of leather. Milton did his best writing blind, sick, and poor, and Beethoven composed his greatest music after he had gone deaf.
These people, instead of complaining about their cruel fates, took advantage of whatever opportunity they had. We will never know, but we must wonder if we would have heard of Helen Keller, had that childhood disease not robbed her of both her sight and hearing. Would Franklin Delano Roosevelt have made it to the White House had he not been afflicted with polio? Was his confinement to the bed and later the wheelchair the reason he was able to think his life philosophy through and develop the style and manner that led him into the most powerful and important position in the world for four consecutive terms?
