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Showing posts with label arrogance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arrogance. Show all posts

Sunday, April 18, 2021

Post #3068

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.
—Oliver Goldsmith

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Sunday, August 02, 2020

Post #3030

Poor is the man who can boast of nothing more than gold and equally so must the woman be who can boast of nothing more than her beauty.
 —W.S. Downey 

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Post #3018

Arrogance is a weed that grows mostly on a dunghill.
—Owen Feltham

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Post #2208

How easy it is for men to be swollen with admiration of their own strength and glory, and to be lifted up so high as to lose sight both of the ground whence they rose, and the hand that advanced them.
—Bishop Hall

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Friday, April 13, 2012

Post #920

In prosperous fortunes be modest and wise,
The greatest may fall, and the lowest may rise;
But insolent people that fall in disgrace,
Are wretched and nobody pities their case.
—Benjamin Franklin

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Post #659

A friend in power is a friend lost.
—Henry Adams

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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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