david strasser

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Post #393

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.
—Ecclesiastes 9:11

Friday, October 29, 2010

Post #392

When somebody tells you nothing is impossible, ask him to dribble a football.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Post #391

Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.
—Eddie Rickenbacker

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Post #390

To think of losing is to lose already.
—Sylvia Townsend Warner

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Post #389

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
—Bertolt Brecht

Monday, October 25, 2010

Post #388

He who has lost confidence can lose nothing more.
—Boiste

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Post #387

Anger is only one letter short of danger.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Post #386

I have never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is a temporary situation.
—Mike Todd

Friday, October 22, 2010

Post #385

Inside of a ring or out, ain't nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong.
—Muhammad Ali

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Post #384

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate;
As the voyage along thru life;
'Tis the will of the soul
That decides the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Post #383

Who longest waits most surely wins.
—Helen Hunt Jackson

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Post #382

It is a bad plan that can't be changed.
—Publilius Syrus

Monday, October 18, 2010

Post #381

Fear gives sudden instincts of skill.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Post #380

Words gain credibility by action.
—Terence

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Post #379

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
—William Blake

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