Saturday, July 31, 2010

Post #302

We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed, but to those whose have differed.
—Charles Caleb Colton

Friday, July 30, 2010

Post #301

The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.
—Queen Victoria

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Post #300

I leave this rule for others when I'm dead
Be always sure you're right — THEN GO AHEAD!
—Davy Crockett

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Post #299

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Post #298

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
—Theodore Roosevelt

Monday, July 26, 2010

Post #297

No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Post #296

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

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Post #295

Failure is success if we learn from it.
—Malcolm Forbes

Friday, July 23, 2010

Post #294

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.
—Benjamin Franklin

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Post #293

I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.
—Clarence Darrow

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Post #292

The Ancient Mariner said to Neptune during a great storm 'O God, you will save me if you wish, but I am going to go on holding my tiller straight.'.
—Michel de Montaigne

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Post #291

God enters by a private door into every individual.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Monday, July 19, 2010

Post #290

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
—Mark Twain

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Post #289

Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.
—George Sand

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Post #288

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.
—Søren Kierkegaard

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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