#mediocrity

...simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions.... A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an "exhibitionist." How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, "Wow! Were you ever drunk last night! ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#giftedness #mediocrity #communication

I shall be in Paris in two days. Well, all is finished. The waves of human mediocrity rise to the sky and they will engulf the refuge whose dams I open. Ah! courage leaves me, my heart breaks! O Lord, pity the Christian who doubts, the sceptic who would believe, the convict of life embarking alone in the night, under a sky no longer illumined by the consoling beacons of ancient faith. ↗

— Huysmans Joris-Karl Huysmans

#faiths #mediocrity #paris #sceptic #courage

Most humans, in varying degrees, are already dead. In one way or another they have lost their dreams, their ambitions, their desire for a better life. They have surrendered their fight for self-esteem and they have compromised their great potential. They have settled for a life of mediocrity, days of despair and nights of tears. They are no more than living deaths confined to cemeteries of their choice. Yet they need not remain in that state. They can be resurrected from their sorry condition. They can each perform the greatest miracle in the world. They can each come back from the dead... ↗

— Og Mandino

#choices #mediocrity #miracle #potential #potential-for-greatness

He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#fault-finding #intelligence #mediocrity #intelligence

We live in an age of mediocrity. ↗

— Lauren Bacall

#live #mediocrity

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents. ↗

— Andrew Carnegie

#how #impressive #matter #mediocrity #motivate

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success. ↗

— Dale Carnegie

#age #business #consult #content #drive

Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them. ↗

— Joseph Heller

#born #mediocre #mediocrity #people #some

Malice is only another name for mediocrity. ↗

— Patrick Kavanagh

#malice #mediocrity #name #only

Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. ↗

— Robert Louis Stevenson

#attempts #conceived #console #discourage #generally