Showing posts with label genius. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genius. Show all posts

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Post #3077

No great genius has ever been without some madness.
—Aristotle

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Post #2817

How often we see the greatest genius buried in obscurity!
—Plautus

Friday, April 26, 2019

Post #2815

Genius is only as rich as it is generous, if it hoards it impoverishes itself. — What the banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have, leisure and a quiet mind.
—Henry David Thoreau

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Post #2032

Every genius is defended from approach by quantities of unavailableness.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Post #1381

Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Friday, July 13, 2012

Post #1003

The ordinary man casts a shadow in a way we do not quite understand. The man of genius casts light.
—George Steiner

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Post #935

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.
—Max Beerbohm

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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