This is a reprint of the article “About Life” by Napoleon Hill.

Life, you can’t subdue me because I refuse to take your discipline too seriously.

When you try to hurt me, I laugh — and the laughter knows no pain.

I appreciate your joys wherever I find them;

your sorrows neither frighten nor discourage me,

for there is laughter in my soul.

Temporary defeat does not make me sad.

I simply set music to the words of defeat and turn it into a song.

Your tears are not for me, for I like laughter much better, and because I like it,

I use it as a substitute for grief and sorrow and pain and disappointment.

Life, you are a fickle trickster — don’t deny it.

You slipped the emotion of love into my heart

so that you might use it as a thorn with which to prick my soul —

but I learned to dodge your trap with laughter.

You tried to lure me with the desire for gold,

but I have fooled you by following the trail which leads to knowledge instead.

You induced me to build beautiful friendships —

then converted my friends to enemies so you may harden my heart,

but I sidestepped your figure on this by laughing off your attempts

and selecting new friends in my own way.

You caused men to cheat me at trade so I will become distrustful,

but I won again because I possess one precious asset which no man can steal —

it is the power to think my own thoughts and to be myself.

You threaten me with death, but to me death is nothing worse

than a long peaceful sleep, and sleep is the sweetest of human experiences

— excepting laughter.

You build a fire of hope in my heart, then sprinkle water on the flames,

but I can go you one better by rekindling the fire — and I laugh at you once more.

You have nothing that can lure me away from laughter,

and you are powerless to scare me into submission.

To a life of laughter, then, I raise my cup of cheer!

Laughing all the way, I celebrate your own Songs of Triumph in portrait form. Contact me here.