The Harder the Conflict, the More Glorious the Triumph

I came across a tweet earlier this morning that took me down an interesting path.

On December 19, 1776, Thomas Paine first published The American Crisis, and it starts like this:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

I wanted to learn more, so I went to the Wikipedia page for The American Crisis in search of the full text and found the Standard Ebooks version of the book. I had never heard of Standard Ebooks, but I’m grateful I know about them now.

Their mission statement is incredible. I’ve downloaded and read many books from Project Gutenberg, but it always felt like I was reading a simple plain text file and not a modern book. But Standard Ebooks takes pride in its presentation, from internal code style to semantic enhancement and typography rules. I’m impressed!

I went ahead and download about half a dozen books from their site and loaded them on my phone, and I’m very eager to get started on them. But not yet because I feel awful today. This booster shot has messed me up today.

No pain, no gain, right?