david strasser: common sense

Showing posts with label common sense. Show all posts

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Post #3002

Common sense has given to words their ordinary signification, and common sense is the genius of mankind.

—François Pierre Guillaume Guizot

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Post #2963

Common sense is in spite of, not because of age.
—Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow

Friday, September 14, 2018

Post #2655

Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.
—Victor Hugo

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Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Common sense punishes all departures from her, by forcing those who rebel into a desperate war with all facts and experience, and into a still more terrible civil war with each other and with themselves.
—Charles Caleb Colton

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Post #775

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.
—Robert Green Ingersoll

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Post #361

Doing what is right isn't the problem; it's knowing what is right.
—Lyndon B. Johnson

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Post #143

The common sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
—Leonardo da Vinci

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Post #107

If there is no wind, row.
—Latin Proverb

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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

david strasser

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