Of course everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet, essayist, scholar

Article (1856-11), “Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,” Atlantic Monthly
    (Source)

Collected in Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, ch. 1 (1858).