Ronni Kurtz describes the encouragement he finds (along with Pip) in Great Expectations: Don’t long for a future time after you’ve studied and learned all the thing; be grateful for who you are today.

Well, Pip, be it so, or be it son’t, you must be a common scholar afore you can be a oncommone one, I should hope! The king upon his throne, with his crown upon his ‘ed, can’t sit and write his acts of Parliament in print, without having begun, when he were a unpromoted Prince, with the alphabet–Ah! And begun at A too, and worked his way to Z.