the great ones QUOTES

1 " We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. "

2 " Please don't entertain for a moment the utterly mistaken idea that there is no drudgery in writing. There is a great deal of drudgery in even the most inspired, the most noble, the most distinguished writing. Read what the great ones have said about their jobs; how they never sit down to their work without a sigh of distress and never get up from it witout a sigh of relief. Do you imagine that your Muse is forever flamelike -- breathing the inspired word, the wonderful situation, the superb solution into your attentive ear? ... Believe me, my poor boy, if you wait for inspiration in our set-up, you'll wait for ever. "

― Ngaio Marsh , Death on the Air and Other Stories

3 " Great teachers had great personalities and that the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a classroom; I preferred a highly oxygenated atmosphere, a climate of intemperance, rhetoric, and feverish melodrama. And I wanted my teachers to make me smart. A great teacher is my adversary, my conqueror, commissioned to chastise me. He leaves me tame and grateful for the new language he has purloined from other kings whose granaries are filled and whose libraries are famous. He tells me that teaching is the art of theft: of knowing what to steal and from whom. Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing they had taught me their larcenous skills well. "

― Pat Conroy , The Lords of Discipline

4 " An acquaintanceship with the literature of the world may be won by any person who will devote half an hour a day to the careful reading of the best books. The habit of reading good books is one that gives great comfort in all the stages and among all the vicissitudes of life. The man who has learned to love good reading is never alone. His friends are the great ones of human history, and to them he may always go for stimulating and helpful communion. --GQ 71 (GQ is A Guide for Quorums of the Melchizedek Priesthood, 3rd Edition, 1930) "

― , Priesthood and Church Government

5 " Average people have a world view that says being comfortable with who and where they are in life is the key to happiness. The great ones have a world view that says happiness is learning, growing and becoming. "

― Steve Siebold

6 " And here he was, a little halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit of the quiet countryside, expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. It was an evil fate. "

― J.R.R. Tolkien , The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2)

7 " To be great at something, you must look to the great ones of the
past and improve on the ideas and techniques that they started. I
was motivated to do better—to improve on the ideas of others. "

― Scott Douglas

8 " It drives me crazy who quickly the great ones get canonized. 'Blah-blah-blah is such a terrible loss.' Does that mean that the death of one mediocre slob is not as terrible? Do fags have to be geniuses to justify living? "

9 " Master I marvel how the fishes live in the sea. Why as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones. "

10 " There are two kinds of writers - the great ones who can give you truths and the lesser ones who can only give you themselves. "

11 " Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones. "

12 " Fishes live in the sea, as men do on land: the great ones eat up the little ones. "