Showing posts with label brevity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brevity. Show all posts

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Post #3006

I saw one excellency was within my reach – it was brevity and I determined to obtain it.
—John Jay

Sunday, February 02, 2020

Post #3004

Cervantes speaks of potted wisdom as " short sentences drawn from a long experience."
—Charles Buxton

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Post #2968

You may get a large amount of truth into a brief space.
―Henry Ward Beecher

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Post #2967

Whatever precepts you give, be short.
—Horace

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Post #1564

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams—the more they are condensed the deeper they burn.
—Robert Southey

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Post #1386

Brevity is a great praise of eloquence.
—Cicero

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Post #1333

It is safe to make a choice of your thoughts, scarcely ever safe to express them all.
—Isaac Barrow

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Post #1144

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
—Thomas Jefferson

Sunday, April 08, 2012

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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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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