Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Post #2503

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
—Homer

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Post #2502

A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.
—Saadi

Monday, January 29, 2018

Post #2501

Scoff not at the natural defects of any which are not in their power to amend. Oh 't is cruelty to beat a cripple with his own crutches.
—Thomas Fuller

Friday, January 26, 2018

Post #2500

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.
—Jonathan Swift

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Post #2499

Adversity, if for no other reason, is of benefit, since it is sure to bring a season of sober reflection. People see clearer at such times. Storms purify the atmosphere.
―Henry Ward Beecher

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Post #2498

For to give is the business of the rich.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Post #2497

My advice is to consult the lives of other men, as we would a looking-glass, and from thence fetch examples for our own imitation.
—Terence

Monday, January 22, 2018

Post #2496

Patience is the ballast of the soul, that will keep it from rolling and tumbling in the greatest storms: and he, that will venture out without this to make him sail even and steady will certainly make shipwreck, and drown himself; first, in the cares and sorrows of this world; and, then, in perdition.
—Ezekiel Hopkins 

Friday, January 19, 2018

Post #2495

I have observed that as long as one lives and bestirs himself, he can always find food and raiment, though it may not be of the choicest description.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Post #2494

For my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my own time than wear a diadem.
—Bishop Berkeley

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Post #2493

They most assume, who know the least.
—John Gay

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Post #2492

Be good and you will be lonesome.
―Mark Twain

Be lonesome and you will be free
Live a lie and you will live to regret it
That's What Living is to Me.
―Jimmy Buffett

Monday, January 15, 2018

Post #2491

Idleness is the holiday of fools.
—Lord Chesterfield

Friday, January 12, 2018

Post #2490

Conversation augments pleasure and diminishes pain by our having shares in either ; for silent woes are greatest, as silent satisfaction least ; since sometimes our pleasure would be none but for telling of it, and our grief insupportable but for participation.
—William Wycherley

Thursday, January 11, 2018

Post #2489

We do not count a man's years, until he has nothing else to count.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Post #2488

It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is.
—Michel de Montaigne

Tuesday, January 09, 2018

Post #2487

No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.
—Charles Caleb Colton

Monday, January 08, 2018

Post #2486

Gifts, they weigh like mountains on a sensitive heart. To me they are oftener punishments than pleasures. 
—Mme. Fee

Friday, January 05, 2018

Post #2485

From error to error, one discovers the entire truth.
—Sigmund Freud

Thursday, January 04, 2018

Wednesday, January 03, 2018

Post #2483

He will always be a slave, who does not know how to live upon a little.
—Horace

Tuesday, January 02, 2018

Post #2482

The world has not yet learned the riches of frugality.
—Cicero

Monday, January 01, 2018

Post #2481

You can reach stupidity only with a cannon ball.
—H. W. Shaw

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.

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El Paso, Texas, United States
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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...

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