Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family: but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.
—Willa Sibert Cather
Search authors and keywords here.
Search This Blog
Sunday, September 10, 2023
Post #3193
Sunday, January 16, 2022
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Post #2917
He walks among his peers unread;
The best of thought: which he hath known,
For lack of listeners are not said.
—]ean lngelow
Wednesday, February 06, 2019
Post #2758
—Henry David Thoreau
Tuesday, April 03, 2018
Post #2547
—Henry David Thoreau
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Post #1967
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Monday, January 26, 2015
Friday, January 31, 2014
Post #1470
—William Gilmore Simms
Wednesday, November 06, 2013
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
Post #1360
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
Post #911
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Post #776
—Jack Kerouac
Saturday, August 07, 2010
Post #309
'Tis Solitude should teach us how to die;
It hath no flatterers.
—Lord Byron
Improvise · Adapt · Overcome
- Home
- Random Quote
- Search This Blog
- Friends of Dave
- Call · Text · Email
- The Penalty of Leadership
- Strengths and talents of people with ADHD
- Life Lesson: when you can't change your circumstances..
- The Snipe's Lament
- William Barrett Travis letter from The Alamo on Fe...
- The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave: From the Latin
- Back to API Website
- Alamo Plumbing Supply
Translate it
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.
- dave
- El Paso, Texas, United States
- Native Texan · Navy Veteran · Various Scars and Tattoos · No Talent yet a Character