david strasser: November 2009

Monday, November 30, 2009

Post #62

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
—Mark Twain

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Post #61

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.
—Theodore Roosevelt

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Post #60

The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
—Robert Frost

Post #59

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
—Publilius Syrus

Friday, November 27, 2009

Post #58

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.
—Leonardo da Vinci

Thursday, November 26, 2009

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up. That is possible for him who never argues and strives with men and facts, but in all experience retires upon himself, and looks for the ultimate cause of things in himself.
—Albert Schweitzer

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Post #56

The line of life is a ragged diagonal between duty and desire.
—W.R. Alger

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Post #55

It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.
—Epicurus

Monday, November 23, 2009

Post #54

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.
—Victor Hugo

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Post #53

Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
—Milton Friedman

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Post #52

Great ideas originate in the muscles.
—Thomas A. Edison

Friday, November 20, 2009

Post #51

In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength.
—Robert E. Lee

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Post #50

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
—Carl Sandburg

Post #49

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
—Napoleon Bonaparte

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Post #48

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
—Oscar Wilde

Monday, November 16, 2009

Post #47

A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.
—Herb Caen

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Post #46

A person is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
—John Barrymore

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Post #45

It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the grain of sand in your shoe.
—Robert W. Service

Friday, November 13, 2009

Post #44

An undefined problem has an indefinite number of solutions.
—Robert A. Humphrey

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Post #43

If you are going through hell, keep going.
—Sir Winston Churchill

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Post #42

Not all those who wander are lost.
—J.R.R. Tolkien

The Penalty of Leadership

In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. ¶Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. ¶In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. ¶The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. ¶When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. ¶If his work be mediocre, he will be left severely alone – if he achieve a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a -wagging. ¶Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. ¶Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius. ¶Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious, continue to cry out that it cannot be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius. ¶Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. ¶The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by. ¶The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy – but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. ¶There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions – envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. ¶And it all avails nothing. ¶If the leader truly leads, he remains – the leader. ¶Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages. ¶That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. ¶That which deserves to live — lives.
written by Theodore F. MacManus