david strasser: fortune

Showing posts with label fortune. Show all posts

Monday, August 28, 2017

Post #2391

If fortune favors you, do not be too elated; if she frowns, do not despond too much.

Monday, July 17, 2017

Post #2381

Fortune gives too much to many, but to none enough.
—Martial

Friday, May 06, 2016

Post #2070

Good fortune is a benefit to the wise, but a curse to the foolish.
—Chinese Proverb

Friday, September 19, 2014

To be thrown upon one's own resources is to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a development, and display an energy, of which they were previously unsusceptible.
—Benjamin Franklin

Friday, October 18, 2013

Post #1377

If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune, for, though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.
—Francis Bacon

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Saturday, October 05, 2013

Post #1364

Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry, and is as often trundling in a wheelbarrow as lolling in a coach and six.
—Oliver Goldsmith

Friday, August 17, 2012

Post #1036

We must master our good fortune, or it will master us.
—Publilius Syrus

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Post #1014

The profits of good luck are perishable; if you build fortune, you build on sand; the more advancement you achieve, the more dangers you run.

—Marquis de Racan

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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