#dio

It's because I haven't courage,' said Samuel. 'I could never quite take the responsibility. When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called his name - but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It's not an uncommon disease. But it's nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.' 'I'd think there are degrees of greatness,' Adam said. 'I don't think so,' said Samuel. 'That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility the hugeness and you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other - cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I'm glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He's suffering over the choosing right now. It's a painful thing to watch. And somewhere in me I want him to say yes. Isn't that strange? A father to want his son condemned to greatness! What selfishness that must be. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#father #greatness #john-steinbeck #mediocrity #son

I don't eat friggin' lobster or anything like that. Because they're alive when you kill it. ↗

— Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi

#food #idiots #lobster #death

when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow. ↗

— William S. Burroughs

#city #dead #death #radio #william

Papa was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones. Papa was an accordion! But his bellows were all empty. Nothing went in and nothing came out. ↗

— Markus Zusak

#death #fathers #death

Fletcher appeared beside her. He peered at the baby. "Can it do any tricks yet?" "I'm still working on it. Want to hold her?" "God, no," Fletcher said laughing. "I'd drop it." "It's not an it, it's my baby sister. Go on, hold her. You won't make a mess of it, i swear. Only an idiot could drop a baby." "You always say I am an idiot." "But you're a special kind of idiot. Here." She passed Alice into his arms, and he stood there, rigid, a look of intense concentration on his face. ↗

— Derek Landy

#derek-landy #idiots #skulduggery-pleasant #death

Mediocrity is Death. ↗

— Suleman Abdullah

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

Here they go cruising for a fortnight up in parts where everyone is dead of radiation, and all that they can catch is measles! ↗

— Nevil Shute

#disease #humor #illness #measles #radioactivity

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease. ↗

— Alexander Pope

#about #anxiety #better #call #disease

People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt... 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 ↗

— Ayn Rand

#greatness #mediocrity #dreams

She really did like me, the idiot. ↗

— Jeff Lindsay

#like #dreams