david strasser

Friday, April 30, 2010

Post #210

We have two ears, but only one mouth, so that we may listen more and talk less.
—Zeno

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Post #209

The road uphill and the road downhill are one and the same.
—Heraclitus

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Post #208

Discovery consists in seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
—Albert Szent-Györgyi

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Post #207

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
—Mark Twain

Monday, April 26, 2010

Post #206

I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.
—William Allen White

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Post #205

A problem adequately stated is a problem well on it's way to being solved.
—R. Buckminster Fuller

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Post #204

Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
—John Updike

Friday, April 23, 2010

Post #203

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.
—Henri Frédéric Amiel

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Post #202

Any road followed to it's end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.
—Frank Herbert

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Post #201

If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.
—Oscar Wilde

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Post #200

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.
—Clarence Darrow

Monday, April 19, 2010

Post #199

Beware the fury of a patient man.
—John Dryden

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Post #198

Children have more need of models than of critics.
—Joseph Joubert

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Post #197

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
—Erasmus

Friday, April 16, 2010

Post #196

The guts carry the feet, not the feet the guts.
—Miguel de Cervantes

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