#ability

Not in order to justify, but simply in order to explain my lack of consistency, I say: Look at my present life and then at my former life, and you will see that I do attempt to carry them out. It is true that I have not fulfilled one thousandth part of them [Christian precepts], and I am ashamed of this, but I have failed to fulfill them not because I did not wish to, but because I was unable to. Teach me how to escape from the net of temptations that surrounds me, help me and I will fulfill them; even without help I wish and hope to fulfill them. Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! If it is not the right way, then show me another way; but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not be glad that I have got lost, do not shout out joyfully: “Look at him! He said he was going home, but there he is crawling into a bog!” No, do not gloat, but give me your help and support. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#encouragement #hypocrisy #testimony #life

It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative--which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it. ↗

— Sylvia Plath

#mental-health #mood-instability #life

I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground. ↗

— Serge Lang

#am #between #concerned #difference #especially

Now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a huge and obvious burden on the creative process. ↗

— Lawrence Lessig

#becomes #burden #century #creative #creative process

So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that we don't even question when the control of that property removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically. ↗

— Lawrence Lessig

#accept #control #culture #democratically #develop

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans. ↗

— Niccolo Machiavelli

#consider #contrive #execute #furnishes #gives

I understand that computers, which I once believed to be but a hermaphrodite typewriter-cum-filing cabinet, offer the cyber literate increased ability to communicate. I do not think this is altogether a bad thing, however it may appear on the surface. ↗

— David Mamet

#altogether #appear #bad #bad thing #believed

I'm a horrible drawer. I have no artistic ability in my hands. ↗

— Katharine McPhee

#artistic #drawer #hands #horrible #i

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short. ↗

— Golda Meir

#diffidence #falls #hits #mark #presumption

Too many people feel that where you start out dictates where you should end up. I was on welfare and just shy of 19 when my first daughter was born, but I was encouraged to take advantage of my ability and drive and remained in school. ↗

— Gwen Moore

#advantage #born #daughter #dictates #drive