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Showing posts with label solitude. Show all posts
Showing posts with label solitude. Show all posts

Sunday, September 10, 2023

Post #3193

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

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Sunday, January 16, 2022

Post #3107

I converse with myself alone and with my books.
—Pliny the Younger

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Post #2917

Man dwells: apart, though not alone,
He walks among his peers unread;
The best of thought: which he hath known,
For lack of listeners are not said.
—]ean lngelow

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Wednesday, February 06, 2019

Post #2758

Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.
—Henry David Thoreau

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Tuesday, April 03, 2018

Post #2547

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
—Henry David Thoreau

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Post #1967

Those beings only are fit for solitude, who like nobody, are like nobody, and are liked by nobody.
—Johann Georg von Zimmermann 

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Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Post #1887

Solitude shows us what we should be; society shows us what we are.
—Rev. Richard Cecil

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Monday, January 26, 2015

Friday, January 31, 2014

Post #1470

Solitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery.
—William Gilmore Simms

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Post #1360

One can be instructed in society; one is inspired only in solitude.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Post #911

It is fine to be out on the hills alone. A man can hardly be a beast or a fool alone on a great mountain.
—Francis Kilvert

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Post #776

No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.
—Jack Kerouac

Saturday, August 07, 2010

Post #309

If from Society we learn to live
'Tis Solitude should teach us how to die;
It hath no flatterers.
—Lord Byron

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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

A deadly viper once bit a hole snipe's hide; But 'twas the viper, not the snipe, that died.

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