"Mediocrity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hardest work any one can do—which is probably the reason why we have so few thinkers. There are two extremes to be avoided: one is the attitude of contempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity. You cannot learn in any school what the world is going to do next year, but you can learn some of the things which the world has tried to do in former years, and where it failed and where it succeeded. If education consisted in warning the young ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... reformers, so likewise many reformations; every country proceeding in a par- ticular way and method, according as their national interest, together with their constitution and clime, in- clined them: some angrily and with extremity; others calmly and with mediocrity, not rending, but easily dividing, the community, and leaving an honest possi- bility of a reconciliation;—which, though peaceable spirits do desire, and may conceive that revolution of time and the mercies of God may ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... and solidity. The name Dryasdust must cling to many a learned professor more firmly than to the most chronological of the old historians. Germany is not the land of outward form. To one accustomed to public speaking, the lecturers will often appear far below the standard of mediocrity in their manner. Though such men as Lasaulx in Munich, Haeusser in Heidelberg, Droyson and Werder in Berlin deliver their lectures in a style that would grace the lecture-room of any country, yet the great majority are far, very far, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... which can possibly inspire religious writing—we mean deep sincerity. But apart from the spirit,—the sine qua non,—the beauty of the form of these works will always give them a high value to the impartial critic. They are far above the mediocrity into which most religious writers always at first appear to be lost, owing to the vast amount of thoughts and expressions which they are compelled to share in common with others. And as there has been awakened within a few years a spirit of collecting and studying such poetry, we cordially ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the brass be not immaculate, certainly all will be to match - the reflectors scratched, the spare lamp unready, the storm-panes in the storehouse. If a light is not rather more than middling good, it will be radically bad. Mediocrity (except in literature) appears to be unattainable by man. But of course the unfortunate of St. Andrews was only an amateur, he was not in the Service, he had no uniform coat, he was (I believe) a plumber by his trade and stood (in the mediaeval ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
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