Sunday, January 31, 2010

Post #122

Time and I against any two. 
—Baltasar Gracián

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Post #121

What's gone and what's past help should be past grief.
—Shakespeare, 'The Winter's Tale'

Friday, January 29, 2010

Post #120

All of us are watchers - of television, of time clocks, of traffic on the freeway - but few are observers.  Everyone is looking, not many are seeing.
—Peter M. Leschak

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Post #119

Moral courage is a more rare commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence.
—Robert F. Kennedy

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Post #118

The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are.  Hypocrisy is not the parent's first duty.
—George Bernard Shaw

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Post #117

Clever men are impressed in their differences from their fellows.  Wise men are conscious of their resemblance to them.
—R.H. Tawney

Monday, January 25, 2010

Post #116

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
—Simone Weil

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Post #115

Some people handle the truth carelessly;
—Others never touch it at all.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Post #114

The true meaning of life  is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
—Nelson Henderson

Friday, January 22, 2010

Post #113

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
—Sir Winston Churchill

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Post #112

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Post #111

Expansion means complexity and complexity, decay; or to put it even more plainly - the more complex, the sooner dead.
—C. Northcote Parkinson

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Post #110

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

Monday, January 18, 2010

Post #109

So long as there's a breath in me, that long will I persist. For now I know one of the greatest principles of success; if I persist long enough I will win.
—Og Mandino

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Post #108

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
—Albert Einstein

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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El Paso, Texas, United States
Native Texan · Navy Veteran · Various Scars and Tattoos · No Talent yet a Character

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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