david strasser: ability

Showing posts with label ability. Show all posts

Sunday, June 25, 2023

Post #3182

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
—William Somerset Maugham

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Post #2217

To become an able man in any profession, there are three things necessary, -nature, study, and practice.
—Aristotle

Monday, May 30, 2016

Most men, even the most accomplished, are of limited faculties; every one sets a value on certain qualities in himself and others: these alone he is willing to favour, these alone will he have cultivated.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Post #1531

Nothing is more destructive of individual character than for a man to lose all faith in his own abilities for the prosecution of his work.
—J.G. Fichte

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Post #1367

All great captains have performed vast achievements by conforming with the rules of art - by adjusting efforts to obstacles.
—Napoleon Bonaparte

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Post #1332

Ability is a poor man's wealth.
—Matthew Wren

Monday, July 29, 2013

Post #1306

A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.
—Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Post #1164

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friday, September 07, 2012

Post #1053

Ability has nothing to do with opportunity.
—Napoleon Bonaparte

Monday, July 16, 2012

Post #1006

Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible.
—Frank Gaines

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Post #921

So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.
—Lucretius

Friday, April 06, 2012

Post #913

It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it's not, it's a visa, and it runs out fast.
—Jane Burchill

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Post #874

Life is like a ten speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.
—Charles M. Schulz

Monday, January 02, 2012

Post #819

Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify: but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself.
—James A. Garfield

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Post #717

A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.
—Miles Davis

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

Friday, August 12, 2011

Post #678

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
—Francis Bacon

Thursday, June 02, 2011

Post #607

Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.
—Malcom Forbes

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Post #431

It isn't hard to be good from time to time in sports. What's tough is being good everyday.
—Willie Mays

Friday, October 29, 2010

Post #392

When somebody tells you nothing is impossible, ask him to dribble a football.

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