Showing posts with label understanding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label understanding. Show all posts

Sunday, August 16, 2020

Post #3032

In every action reflect upon the end ; and in your undertaking it, consider why you do it.
—Jeremy Taylor

Friday, October 25, 2019

Post #2945

A great interpreter of life ought not himself to need interpretation.
—John Morely

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, August 13, 2015

Post #1879

Humility is the light of the understanding.
—John Bunyan

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Post #1293

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.
—José Ortega y Gasset

Friday, February 22, 2013

Post #1196


We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.
—Quintilian

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

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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