#mediocrity

All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity. ↗

— James F. Cooper

#around #character #common #dependent #existence

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed. ↗

— Hans Magnus Enzensberger

#greatness #mediocrity #needed #politics

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#gifts #mediocrity #recognition #sherlock-holmes #talent

The only activity a cynic will find contagious is yawning, that is, with other people, at other people. ↗

— Criss Jami

#bore #boredom #boring #contagious #cynic

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

I felt I was drawing close to that age, that place in life, where you realize one day what you'd told yourself was a Zen detachment turns out to be naked fear. You'd had one serious love relationship in your life and it had ended in tragedy, and the tragedy had broken something inside you. But instead of trying to repair the broken place, or at least really stop and look at it, you skated and joked. You had friends, you were a decent citizen. You hurt no one. And your life was somehow just about half of what it could be. ↗

— Roland Merullo

#denial #love #mediocrity #settling #tragedy

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

And I — my head oppressed by horror — said: "Master, what is it that I hear? Who are those people so defeated by their pain?"       And he to me: "This miserable way is taken by the sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.       They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart.       The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them — even the wicked cannot glory in them. ↗

— Dante Alighieri

#indifference #mediocrity #beauty

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

Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#inglorious #lowly #mediocrity #perseverance #success