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Showing posts with label observations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label observations. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Post #2837

Each one sees what he carries in his heart.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Post #2014

Fools learn nothing from wise men, but wise men learn much from fools.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Post #1663

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
—Friedrich Nietzsche

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Post #1438

You should not only have attention to everything, but a quickness of attention, so as to observe at once all the people in the room—their motions, their looks and their words—and yet without staring at them and seeming an observer.
—Lord Chesterfield

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Post #1178

If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.
—J.A. Wheeler

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Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Post #675

Twixt the optimist and the pessimist
The difference is droll:
The optimist sees the doughnut
But the pessimist sees the hole.
—McLandburgh Wilson

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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Post #327

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and present hearer.
—Robert Louis Stevenson

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Friday, August 06, 2010

Post #308

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
—Albert Einstein

Monday, August 02, 2010

Post #304

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
—George Bernard Shaw

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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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