The all-new quote thread

[AhDistinctly]

That's a great leadership quote, Saturn

How goes the leadership class, Malia? You should have some good quotes for this thread!

You'll probably study Peter F. Drucker. He has some good quotes, some extremely insightful:

Leadership is not magnetic personality—that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making friends and influencing people"—that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

[Malia]

Great quote, AhDistinctly! We are studying "Transformational Leadership" which can also be seen as "servant leadership" where the goal is to help others and put yourself in the back seat, so to speak. It is a new and exciting development in Leadership studies and it is a powerfully positive force.

Yesterday, we heard a lecture by a gentleman from India who is using transformational leadership to help the lower caste populations become more empowered and free. He made a great quote about charisma--your quote reminds me of his quote
He said:
"Charisma without character is catastrophic."

One of the most important things a leader needs is character and a sense of ethics. Otherwise, corruption is sure to come.

[Saturn]

“I have learnt that there can be no remedy for love,
No special herb or ointment to soothe the heart
Except the Muses. It is light and quick, their drug,
And works for all, but is very hard to find.”
XI, ‘The Cyclops’, 1-4.

“A touch of grey at the temples
Creeps outward, hair by hair, and before we know it
Our time has gone. Act now, while the sap runs green.”
XIV, ‘Aeschines and Thyonichus’, 68-70.
From Theocritus, Idylls.

[dks]

Superb quotes, as always, Saturn.

Here's mine today--I took some allergy pill and now my wits are a bit dulled (not in a good, wine drinking way, either)-- which I cannot stand--it's like muffling a bleating lamb--it'll wear off, though, and I'll then have to make up for the past hours' passionate expressions lost forever to a damn decongestant:

My nerves are turned on. I
hear them like
musical instruments. Where
there was silence
the drums, the strings are
incurably playing. You did
this.
Pure genius at work. Darling,
the composer has stepped
into fire.

Anne Sexton

I need to practice the art of restraint.

[Saturn]

“O Woman lovely woman how beguiling
Is thy sweet voice of music and thy smiles
Thy cheeks all roses and thy lips all smiling
And where’s the treachery that thy heart beguiles
For thy sweet self man labours, sweats, and toils
Mines the whole earth and raviges the deep
For thee the summer in its glory smiles
Yet ‘Man was made to mourn’ and women weep
And briars and thorns as harvests both must reap…

Poets and Poesy are aspirations
Of minds superior to the common lot
The light and life and ornament of nations
That leave no writing they could wish to blot
Time mossed in centurys find them unforgot
Green with the leaves of laurel and the bay
The poet’s dwelling is a sacred spot
Where pilgrims love when ages pass away
The low mossed cot – the steeple crack’d and grey…”
John Clare.

[dks]

The morning was full of sunlight and hope. [She] could see before her no denial--only the promise of excessive joy. She lay in bed awake, with bright eyes full of speculation. "He loves you, poor fool." If she could but get that conviction firmly fixed in her mind, what mattered about the rest? She felt she had been childish and unwise the night before in giving herself over to despondency. She recapitulated the motives which no doubt explained [his] reserve. They were not insurmountable; they would not hold if he really loved her; they could not hold against her own passion, which he must come to realize in time. She pictured him going to his business that morning. She even saw how he was dressed; how he walked down one street, and turned the corner of another; saw him bending over his desk, talking to people who entered the office, going to his lunch, and perhaps watching for her on the street. He would come to her in the afternoon or evening, sit...talk a little, and go away as he had done the night before. But how delicious it would be to have him there with her! She would have no regrets, nor seek to penetrate his reserve if he still chose to wear it.
Kate Chopin--The Awakening Ch. 35

[Saturn]

If I did dream, it would be a dream that someone would think that way about me.

Wonderful quote Denise.

[dks]

If I did dream, it would be a dream that someone would think that way about me.

Yes, it's nice to be pursued, isn't it? Sorry the forthcoming quote is so long, but the truth and passion drips from it in such an achingly beautiful way, that I cannot keep from posting it.

It is not love, but the desire of riches and position which makes a woman run into the embraces of an indolent husband. Ambition, and not affection, forms such marriages. I believe indeed they may be followed with some honours and advantages, but I can never think that this is the way to experience the pleasures of affectionate union, nor to feel those subtle and charming joys when hearts long parted are at last united. These martyrs of marriage pine always for larger fortunes which they think they have missed. The wife sees . husbands richer than her own, and the husband wives better portioned than his. Their mercenary vows occasion regret, and regret produces hatred. Soon they part--or else desire to. This restless and tormenting passion for gold punishes them for aiming at other advantages by love than love itself.

If there is anything that may properly be called happiness here below, I am persuaded it is the union of two persons who love each other with perfect liberty, who are united by a secret inclination, and satisfied with each other's merits. Their hearts are full and leave no vacancy for any other passion; they enjoy perpetual tranquillity because they enjoy content...

I tell you to-day what I would not have said to you yesterday. I had resolved to love you no more; I considered I had made a vow, taken a veil, and am as it were dead and buried, yet there rises unexpectedly from the bottom of my heart a passion which triumphs over all these thoughts, and darkens alike my reason and my religion. You reign in such inward retreats of my soul that I know not where to attack you; when I endeavour to break those chains by which I am bound to you I only deceive myself, and all my efforts but serve to bind them faster.
Letters of Aberlard and Heloise
Letter II Heloise's response

[Saturn]

If there is anything that may properly be called happiness here below, I am persuaded it is the union of two persons who love each other with perfect liberty, who are united by a secret inclination, and satisfied with each other's merits. Their hearts are full and leave no vacancy for any other passion; they enjoy perpetual tranquillity because they enjoy content...

The meaning of life?

I think so.

[dks]

If there is anything that may properly be called happiness here below, I am persuaded it is the union of two persons who love each other with perfect liberty, who are united by a secret inclination, and satisfied with each other's merits. Their hearts are full and leave no vacancy for any other passion; they enjoy perpetual tranquillity because they enjoy content...

The meaning of life?

I think so.

I understand your language.

[Saturn]

Its what I yearn for above all else, so to me that is what perfect happiness would consist of.

[dks]

Its what I yearn for above all else, so to me that is what perfect happiness would consist of.

...*sigh* yeah, me too.

Why do I torture myself by digging up these quotes which I have highlighted so many times, the page is threadbare? I'd thought I lingered over that one enough when I first read it.

[Saturn]

“Helen the wild, maddening Helen,
one for the many, the thousand lives
you murdered under Troy, Now you are crowned
with this consummate wreath, the blood
that lives in memory, glistens age to age.
Once in the halls she walked and she was war,
angel of war, angel of agony, lighting men to death.
Pray no more for death, broken
as you are. And never turn
your wrath on her, call her
the scourge of men, the one alone
who destroyed a myriad Greek lives –
Helen the grief that never heals.”
-Aeschylus, Agamemnon.

[AhDistinctly]

For anyone with an upcoming birthday...

Still cruel and still endowed with power to be so,
Gifted as you are with the gifts of Venus,
That moment is coming, when, suddenly, in the glass,
You see beginning the little signs of change,
Downy foreshadowing of the beard to come,
The locks that curl and wanton to the shoulders
All of a sudden looking a little different,
The cream-and-rose complexion beyond the beauty
Of freshest rose now not quite exactly
The way it had been just yesterday morning.
Then you will say, Alas for what I was
When I was younger than I am, Alas
That then I did not know what I know now;
Alas, that now I know what I did not know.
Horace, To Ligurinus

[Saturn]