Showing posts with label accountability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label accountability. Show all posts

Sunday, August 13, 2023

Post #3189

Few blame themselves until they have exhaused all other possibilities.
—Anonymous

Sunday, September 18, 2022

Post #3142

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
—William Shakespeare

Monday, October 10, 2016

Post #2181

If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.
—J. Paul Getty

Friday, March 11, 2016

Post #2030

Your own words and actions are the only things you will be called to account for.
—Thomas à Kempis

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Post #1729

It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.
—Molière

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Sunday, October 02, 2011

Post #728

The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.
—Thomas Carlyle

Friday, September 16, 2011

Post #712

As always, victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.
—Count Galeazzo Ciano

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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