david j strasser

Sunday, May 21, 2023

Post #3177

Challenges make life interesting, however, overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.
—Mark Twain

Sunday, May 14, 2023

Post #3176

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
—Bertrand Russell

Sunday, May 07, 2023

Post #3175

The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.
—Norman Vincent Peale

Sunday, April 30, 2023

Post #3174

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
—Chinese Proverb

Sunday, April 23, 2023

Post #3173

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?
—Diogenes

Sunday, April 16, 2023

Post #3172

It is far better to be alone than to be in bad company.
—George Washington

Sunday, April 09, 2023

Post #3171

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.
—Amelia Earhart

Sunday, April 02, 2023

Post #3170

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
—Aesop

Sunday, March 26, 2023

Post #3169

Good judgement comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgement.
—Will Rogers

Sunday, March 19, 2023

Post #3168

Learning never exhausts the mind.
—Leonardo da Vinci

Sunday, March 12, 2023

Post #3167

These things are good in little measure and evil in large: yeast, salt, and hesitation.
—The Talmud

Sunday, March 05, 2023

Post #3166

We work to become, not to acquire.
—Elbert Hubbard

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Sunday, February 19, 2023

Post #3164

Curiosity is a willing, a proud, an eager confession of ignorance.
—S. Leonard Rubinstein

Sunday, February 12, 2023

Post #3163

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.
—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