Investing well is, in the end, a discipline of character. These are the people and ideas that form ours.
Patience, conviction, endurance, vision — the qualities that make a steady steward of capital are the same qualities found in the lives and stories we return to again and again. We keep this small library close, because how we think is inseparable from what we read.
Wordsworth's poem celebrates the noble and courageous soul — strong and resilient in the face of adversity, who holds to a sense of purpose through every setback and finds fulfillment in serving a cause greater than himself.
“Who, not content that former worth stand fast, looks forward, persevering to the last, from well to better, daily self-surpast.”
Hemingway's Santiago goes eighty-four days without a catch, then battles a great marlin for days at sea — only to lose it to the sharks. He returns with a skeleton and an undefeated spirit: a celebration of the dignity of the struggle itself.
“But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
The definitive account of Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic expedition — the ship Endurance crushed by ice, the crew stranded for over a year, and every man brought home alive. Its spirit, and its Latin motto, gave Vincimus its name.
“No matter what the odds, a man does not pin his last hope for survival on something and then expect that it will fail.”
The French aviator and writer turned a life of flight into meditations on vision, longing, and the human condition. His work is a reminder that the greatest endeavors begin not with tasks, but with desire.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood — but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
Written from a Nazi prison cell, Bonhoeffer's poem wrestles with the distance between the composed man others see and the restless soul he knows himself to be — and resolves, at last, in being fully known.
“Who am I? These lonely questions mock me. Whoever I am, You know me, I am yours, O God.”
For more than four decades in Parliament, Wilberforce gave his life to a single conviction — the abolition of the slave trade. He met defeat after defeat and pressed on. His is the model of conviction held across a lifetime.
“God Almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.”
A diving accident at seventeen left Joni Eareckson Tada a quadriplegic. In the decades since, she has become an artist, a best-selling author, and an advocate for people with disabilities the world over — finding, in hardship, a deeper purpose and an unshakeable joy.
“I would rather be in this wheelchair knowing God than on my feet without Him.”
Scholar, novelist, and one of the most beloved writers of the twentieth century, C.S. Lewis brought reason and imagination together in equal measure. His work returns again and again to hope — and to the conviction that the best is always still ahead.
“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
If these ideas resonate, we would be honored to talk with your family.
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