Showing posts with label stubborness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stubborness. Show all posts

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Post #2839

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
—Jonathan Swift

Friday, February 08, 2019

Post #2760

Man's worst ill is stubbornness of heart.
—Sophocles

Friday, July 07, 2017

Post #2375

Men who want to do everything their own way must make a world to suit them, for it can not be done in this.

Friday, March 27, 2015

Post #1780

An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him.
—Alexander Pope

Thursday, December 05, 2013

Post #1425

The self-educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities.
—Isaac D'Israeli

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Post #1322

It is a difficult thing to change the disposition, and if there is anything deeply engrained in our nature to suddenly pluck it out.
Cicero

Friday, May 24, 2013

Post #1261

When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun with nettles.
—Horace Walpole

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Post #1040

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Post #246

The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
—James Russell Lowell

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Post #193

"My idea of an agreeable person" said Hugo Bohun "is a person who agrees with me".
—From Lothair by Benjamin Disraeli

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Post #167

It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Post #74

Who won't be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the rock.
—Nautical saying

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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