#ellen

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate. ↗

— John Keats

#capable #disagreeable #evaporate #every #excellency

Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#ancient-greeks #atheism #boredom #brotherhood #cana

When I woke up Sunday morning at the Open and stepped outside and felt the wind and rain in my face, I knew I had an excellent chance to win if I just took my time and trusted myself. ↗

— Tom Kite

#excellent #face #felt #had #i

The necessity to constantly turn in an excellent performance, to be absolutely wedded to this dedication and this ideal means that as a child you're going to pay for it personally. ↗

— Twyla Tharp

#child #constantly #dedication #excellent #going

But, uh, censorship at that time said that you just absolutely couldn't do anything involving children and so we had to go from there. I don't remember what I changed it to. Duvall is just excellent in it. ↗

— Robert Towne

#anything #censorship #changed #children #excellent

You can become an even more excellent person by constantly setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing everything possible to live up to those standards. ↗

— Brian Tracy

#constantly #doing #even #everything #excellent

There is no real limit to how much better a person who really commits to getting better can get. Every manager has the potential to become an excellent manager for the rest of his or her career. ↗

— Brian Tracy

#better #career #commits #every #excellent

The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value. ↗

— Charles Dudley Warner

#excellence #gift #lies #rather #than

I met all these important people and did all these stories, but I always had such excellent producers and assistants. I could show up to interview a world leader or a criminal and they would have things so well prepared anyone could have done it. It wasn't about 'me,' it was about 'us.' ↗

— Mike Wallace

#always #anyone #assistants #could #criminal

Everybody is standing, but you must stand out. Everybody is breaking grounds; but you must breakthrough! Everybody scratching it; but you must scratch it hard! Everybody is going, but you must keep going extra miles! Dare to be exceptionally excellent and why not? ↗

— Israelmore Ayivor

#best #breakthrough #excel #excellent #exceptional