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Showing posts with label possessions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label possessions. Show all posts

Sunday, May 05, 2024

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Post #2249

Remember, not one penny can we take with us into the unknown land.
—Seneca

Friday, January 17, 2014

Post #1460

All our possessions are as nothing compared to health, strength, and a clear conscience.
—Hosea Ballou

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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Post #1278

If you live as nature bids you, you will never be poor; if to obtain the good report of men, you will never be rich.
—Seneca

Friday, August 26, 2011

Post #692

There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.
—Arthur Schopenhauer

Friday, June 03, 2011

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Post #296

I have the greatest of all riches: that of not desiring them.
—Eleonora Duse

Monday, July 12, 2010

Post #283

Property given away is the only kind that will forever be yours.
—Maritial

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Post #174

A wise man will desire no more than what he may get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contently.
Benjamin Franklin

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Post #110

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
—John Ruskin

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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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