Quotes About Mediocrity

Mi genio, si se puede decir así, consiste en combinar un montón de cualidades medias en una representación compacta.

My genius, if I can call it that, is to combine a whole load of averageness into one compact frame.

He was an average man. A man willing to accept things as they were, and, because of this, he lacked the potential to be in anyway original.

Camarile ticsite ale Pompeiului debordau, femeile boite, impudice, sterile; barbatii mercantili, mediocri, sarcastici, obositi! Toti zeii repudiati - din Grecia, din Orient, din Egipt - se inhaitau intr-o hora scelerata, rapace, impartindu-si, ranjind, ofrandele sacre si sufletul oamenilor. In vreme ce, la picioarele vezuviului, cetatea statea intr-o rana, hohotind fara griji.

I believe a great many people are born writer or artist, and die without ever realizing it. Books go unwritten, paintings unpainted. The fortunate ones are those who discover what they were meant to do. I might have been an excellent soccer player. I might have been an excellent writer. If I'd tried to do both, I'd have been no more than mediocre. I chose not to be mediocre.

There is no alternative universe where Ralph Sampson is a beloved symbol of excellence. There's no Philip K. Dick novel where he averages a career double-double and gets four rings. He could never be that guy. He was needed elsewhere, for other reasons. He was needed to remind people that their own self-imposed mediocrity is better than choking on transcendence.

For official record, announce instructor, the state requires no epic hero. No strive achieve personal celebrity of spotlight and applause. Lectures instructor, the state desires best ideal perform as mediocre. No gain attention showboat. No buffoon. Best effort so occur average. Suppress climbing ego. Become ordinary. Invisible.

They jostled one another, competed for space below as they did above, in a minuet of ruin and triumph. In the subway, down in the dark, no citizen was more significant or more decrepit than another. All were smeared into a common average of existence, the A's and the C's tumbling or rising to settle into a ruthless mediocrity. No escape.

He hovered on unexceptionality.

There are teachers and students with square minds who are by nature meant to undergo the fascination of catagories. For them, 'schools' and 'movements' are everything; by painting a group symbol on the brow of mediocrity, they condone their own incomprehension of true genius.

My advice to a budding literary critic would be as follows. Learn to distinguish banality. Remember that mediocrity thrives on ideas. Beware of the modish message. Ask yourself if the symbol you have detected is not your own footprint. Ignore allegories. By all means place the how above the what but do not let it be confused with the so what. Rely on the sudden erection of your small dorsal hairs. Do not drag in Freud at this point. All the rest depends on personal talent.

T]his is how it will remain until ... literary criticism discards its sociological, religious, philosophical and other textbooks, which only help mediocrity to admire itself. Only then will you be free to say what you please. [F]or God's sake stop that irrelevant chitchat.

What I am thinking of is the man of imagination and science, whose courage is infinite because his curiosity surpasses his courage. Nothing will keep him back...Any true scientist (not, of course,the fraudulent mediocrity, whose only treasure is the ignorance he hides like a bone) should be capable of experiencing that sensuous pleasure of direct and divine knowledge. He may be twenty and he may be eighty-five but without that tingle there is no science.

Nichts auf der Welt verabscheue ich mehr als kollektive Aktivität, diese öffentliche Badeanstalt, wo sich die Behaarten und die Glitschigen zu einer Multiplizierung der Mittelmäßigkeit treffen.

Many fellow exils of mine denounce indignantly (and in this indignation there is a pinch of pleasure) fashionable abominations, including current dances. But fashion is a creature of man's mediocrity, a certain level of life, the vulgarity of equality, and to denounce it means admitting that mediocrity can create something (whether it be a form of government or a new kind of hairdo) worth making a fuss about.

IS IT A SIN TO BE AVERAGE?

But there is something worse than settling for mediocrity. It's exclusivity. It's the temptation to up the ante and to raise the bar of discipleship so high that it disqualifies all but the most committed, and thus thins the herd that Jesus came to expand.

We live in an age of mediocrity.

It is a sad mission to cut through and destroy with the scissors of analysis the delicate and iridescent veils with which our proud mediocrity clothes itself.

When the New York City pension funds began investing in index funds in the mid-1970s, the New York Times, in an article entitled "Why Indexing Frightens Money Managers," quoted Dave H. Williams, then chairman of the investment committee of Mitchell Hutchins & Company: "It's an avenue for seeking mediocrity.

Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity.

Otkako znam za sebe, uvek sam ose?ao da sam sam, nekako otu?en od sveta, od larme i mediokriteta koji se šire poput zarazne bolesti. U jednom trenutku, pomislio sam da bi knjige mogle da me izbave od tog ose?aja napuštenosti i apatije, ali ne treba previše o?ekivati o knjiga. One vam pri?aju pri?e, omogu?avaju vam da proživite, posredno, deli?e stvarnosti, ali nikada vas ne?e uzeti u naru?je da vas uteše.

Quizá era momento de claudicar en mis anhelos de grandeza. Convertirme en una mamá modelo dedicada al cien por ciento a mis hijos y a mi marido. Olvidarme de que solo a través de la danza podía alcanzar mis metas y vivir más en concordia con mis posibilidades. En otras palabras, aceptar mi mediocridad y mi pusilanimidad

añoraba a su anterior editor, que decía preferir la novela imperfecta de un escritor con talento, que la novela perfecta de un escritor mediocre. En la obra de un escritor con talento puedes hallar una frase, una sola, que te cambiela vida. En un escritor mediocre lo más que podrás encontrar es corrección gramatical.