Showing posts with label control. Show all posts
Showing posts with label control. Show all posts

Sunday, November 14, 2021

Post #3098

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
—Voltaire

Friday, January 06, 2017

Post #2245

Nothing is harder to govern than man when fortune smiles, nor anything more tractable than he when calamity lays her hands upon him.
—Plutarch

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Post #1303

Too great haste in paying off an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
—François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Post #1240

Fire is the best of servants; but what a master.
—Thomas Carlyle

Friday, June 01, 2012

Post #967

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
—Charles de Montesquieu

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Post #707

A capital ship for an ocean trip
Was the Walloping Window Blind -
No gale that blew dimayed her crew
Or troubled the Captain's mind.
The man at the wheel was taught to feel
Contempt for the wildest blow.
And it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,
That he'd been in his bunk below.
—Charles Edward Carryl

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Post #680

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of sails and not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Post #663

Whether you are dealing with an animal or a child, to convince is to weaken.
—Colette

Monday, May 16, 2011

Post #591

The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.
—John Berry

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Post #330

There are two levers for moving men - interest and fear.
—Napoleon Bonaparte

Monday, July 19, 2010

Post #290

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
—Mark Twain

Monday, May 31, 2010

Post #241

You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.
—Jim Bouton

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Post #240

You can never have a greater or a lesser dominion than that over yourself.
—Leonardo da Vinci

Monday, May 10, 2010

Post #220

The best way to get the better of temptation is just to yield to it.
—Clementina Sterling Graham

Thursday, February 18, 2010

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 *