In his book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, first published in 1948, Dale Carnegie mentions that when he started writing it, he offered a two hundred-dollar prize for the most helpful and inspiring true story on “How I Conquered Worry.” A story written along these lines was sent in by a Mr. C.R. Boston, one of the most significant parts of which we reproduce below:
“I lost my mother when I was nine years old, my father when I was twelve. We were haunted by the fear of being called orphans … Then Mr. and Mrs. Loftin took me to live with them on their farm. Mr. Loftin told me I could stay there ‘as long as I wanted’ … I started going to school. The other children picked on me and poked fun at my big nose and said I was dumb and called me an orphan. I was hurt so badly that I wanted to fight them, but, Mr. Loftin, the farmer who had taken me in, said to me: ‘Always remember that it takes a bigger man to walk away from a fight than it does to stay and fight.’
What is meant here by ‘bigger’? In this context it has nothing to do with being taller or stronger, but signifies greater-hearted, broader-minded, and more able than a smaller man’ to sustain injury or insult without losing one’s composure. One’s ‘bigness’ here has to do not with physical hardihood, but with moral courage.