#mediocrity

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself. ↗

— Charles Lamb

#am #another #being #encourage #excellent

We don't want to think about our weaknesses. We don't want to talk about them, and we certainly don't want anyone else to point them out. This is a classic sign of mediocrity, and this mediocrity has a firm grip on the Church and humanity at this moment in history. ↗

— Matthew Kelly

#mediocrity #p #life

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#ascendant #general #mankind #mediocrity #power

Any corporate policy and plan which is typical of the industry is doomed to mediocrity. Where this is not so, it should be possible to demonstrate that all other competitors are at a distinct disadvantage. ↗

— Bruce Henderson

#competitors #corporate #demonstrate #disadvantage #distinct

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions. ↗

— William E. Gladstone

#among #commonly #dangerous #even #exceptions

Mediocrity is Death. ↗

— Suleman Abdullah

#brands #creative-profession #ideas #inspirational #life-lessons

Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes,thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them - while you'd give a year of my life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear. They have no way of knowing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors - hatred? no, not hatred, but boredom - the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing boredom. Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don't respect? Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?" "I've felt it all my life," she said. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#atlas-shrugged #inspirational #mediocrity #objectivism #second-handers

But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something? Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you. Mediocrity's a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#average #mediocrity #creation

Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul’s possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#individuality #mediocrity #soul #individuality

Media, the plural of mediocrity. ↗

— Jimmy Breslin

#mediocrity #plural