The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.”
—Lin Yutang
Sunday, June 13, 2021
Post #3076
Sunday, June 06, 2021
Sunday, March 14, 2021
Post #3063
Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you can imagine.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Post #2082
—Sir Philip Sidney
Thursday, November 05, 2015
Friday, October 16, 2015
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Post #1579
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Post #1558
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Post #1275
Friday, November 16, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Post #1089
Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.
—Charles Dudley Warner
Sunday, May 06, 2012
Post #943
—Sir Winston Churchill
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Post #727
—Henry David Thoreau
Friday, June 03, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Post #529
—Euripides
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...