Showing posts with label silence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label silence. Show all posts

Thursday, September 19, 2019

Post #2919

Silence is the understanding of fools and one of the virtues of the wise.
—Bernard de Bonnard

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Post #2702

Silence is learned by the many misfortunes of life.
—Seneca

Monday, November 19, 2018

Post #2701

It is only reason that teaches silence. The heart teaches us to speak.
—Jean Paul Richter

Monday, April 30, 2018

Post #2566

I regret often that I have spoken, never that I have been silent.
—Publius Syrus

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Post #1969

Of all virtues, Zeno made choice of silence; for by it, said he, I hear other men's imperfections, and conceal my own.
—Rule of Life 

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Post #1748

Nothing is more becoming a man than silence. It is not the preaching but the practice which ought to be considered as the more important. A profusion of words is sure to lead to error.
—The Talmud

Monday, May 13, 2013

Post #1252

Blessed is the man, who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving in words evidence of the fact.
—George Eliot

Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Post #1223

The pause - that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, howsoever felicitous, could accomplish it.
—Mark Twain

Friday, February 01, 2013

Post #1179

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever so effective as a rightly timed pause.
—Mark Twain

Monday, March 05, 2012

Post #882

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
—Maurice Switzer

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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