Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Post #2893

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.
—Margaret Fuller

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Post #2892

Knowledge is like money,—the more a man gets, the more he craves.
—H.W. Shaw

Monday, August 12, 2019

Post #2891

Every monarch is subject to a mightier one.
—Seneca

Friday, August 09, 2019

Post #2890

I have sped by land and sea, and mingled with much people, but never yet could find a spot unsunned by human kindness.
—Martin Farquhar Tupper

Thursday, August 08, 2019

Post #2889

Wise sayings often fall on barren ground: but a kind word is never thrown away.
—Sir Arthur Helps

Wednesday, August 07, 2019

Post #2888

He who sings frightens away his ills.
—Miguel de Cervantes

Tuesday, August 06, 2019

Post #2887

The burden becomes light which is cheerfully borne.
—Ovid

Monday, August 05, 2019

Post #2886

A man looketh on his little one as a being of better hope; in himself ambition is dead, but it bath a resurrection in his son.
—Martin Farquhar Tupper

Friday, August 02, 2019

Post #2885

Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.
—Charles Caleb Colton

Thursday, August 01, 2019

Post #2884

A prudent man should neglect no circumstances.
—Sophocles

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Post #2883

When we leave this world, and are laid in the earth, the prince walks as narrow a path as the day-laborer.
—Miguel de Cervantes

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Post #2882

Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.
—Voltaire

Monday, July 29, 2019

Post #2881

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friday, July 26, 2019

Post #2880

Tolerance does not mark the progress of religion. It is the fatal sign of its decline.
—Isidore van Cleef

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Post #2879

Hardly a man will you find who could live with his door opena..
—Seneca

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...

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