#mediocrity

Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity. ↗

— Charles G. Dawes

#dignity #mediocrity #preserve #requires

Go for the gold: better one great column and some undistinguished ones than constant mediocrity. ↗

— Allan Sloan

#column #constant #go #gold #great

One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me. ↗

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

#could #everlasting #fashionable #grand #great

You will always feel insignificant if you never do anything to change the world or another person's life, other than your own. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#apathy #insignificance #mediocrity #change

I sometimes make pictures which are not up to my standard, but then it can only be said of a mediocrity that all his work is up to his standard. ↗

— Ernst Lubitsch

#i #make #mediocrity #only #pictures

The function of a genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve. ↗

— Hugh Trevor-Roper

#function #genius #give #mediocrity #new

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

We live in an age of mediocrity. ↗

— Lauren Bacall

#live #mediocrity

In America, I would say New York and New Orleans are the two most interesting food towns. In New Orleans, they don't have a bad deli. There's no mediocrity accepted. ↗

— Mario Batali

#accepted #america #bad #deli #i