Thursday, November 30, 2017

Post #2459

Anger turns the mind out of doors and bolts the entrance.
—Plutarch

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Post #2458

Half the ills we hoard within our hearts are ills because we hoard them.
—Barry Cornwall

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Post #2457

Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it.
—Mark Twain

Monday, November 27, 2017

Post #2456

The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
—Mark Twain

Friday, November 24, 2017

Post #2455

Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.
—Joseph Joubert

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Post #2454

Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest.
—Laurence Sterne 

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Post #2453

None so blind as those that will not see.
—Mathew Henry

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Post #2452

Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim, the very roughness only stimulates the climber to steadier and steadier steps, till that legend of the rough places fulfills itself at last, "per aspero ad astra," over steep ways to the stars.
—Bishop W. C. Doane

Monday, November 20, 2017

Post #2451

Every inordinate cup is unblessed and the ingredient is a devil.
—William Shakespeare

Friday, November 17, 2017

Post #2450

Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.
—Lord Chesterfield

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Post #2449

Who can blame me if I cherish the belief that the world is still young,—that there are great possibilities in store for it?
—John Tyndall 

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Post #2448

He that would be a master must draw from the life as well as copy from originals, and join theory and experience together.
—Jeremy Collier

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Post #2447

The severest punishment suffered by a sensitive mind, for injury inflicted upon another, is the consciousness of having done it.
—Hosea Ballou

Monday, November 13, 2017

Post #2446

Age bears away with it all things, even the powers of the mind.
—Virgil

Friday, November 10, 2017

Post #2445

The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.
—William Hazlitt

Thursday, November 09, 2017

Post #2444

I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when he thought of you first.
—George MacDonald

Wednesday, November 08, 2017

Post #2443

In great straits and when hope is small, the boldest counsels are the safest.
—Livy

Tuesday, November 07, 2017

Post #2442

Those who worship Gold in a world so corrupt as this we live in, have at least one thing to plead in defense of their idolatry--the power of their Idol. It is true, that like other Idols, it can neither move, see, hear, feel, or understand; but, unlike other Idols, it has often communicated all these powers to those who had them not, and annihilated them in those who had. This Idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite.
—Charles Caleb Colton

Monday, November 06, 2017

Post #2441

I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friday, November 03, 2017

Thursday, November 02, 2017

Post #2439

All beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.
—Charles de Montesquieu

Wednesday, November 01, 2017

Post #2438

Those who want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.
—Francis Bacon

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

A deadly viper once bit a hole snipe's hide; But 'twas the viper, not the snipe, that died.

My photo
El Paso, Texas, United States
Native Texan · Navy Veteran · Various Scars and Tattoos · No Talent yet a Character

One From the Archives

Post #1234

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied...

CONTACT DAVE

Name

Email *

Message *