jimhbutton
104 posts
msg #64032
- Ignore jimhbutton |
6/19/2008 1:19:48 PM
Mighty Riggs,
Glad to have you back on-line with this thread!
I just want to encourage you that there are those of us who truly love what you bring to table. Since following your posts, which unfortunately have been all-too-often interrupted by a certain unnamed egg throwing "hooligan," I have often thought of how the following quotes by our 26th U.S. President -- Theodore Roosevelt -- apply to you. If you'll indulge me for a few moments:
One of the top three most requested TR quotes is that regarding the "Man in the Arena," aka "Not the Critic":
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
-- ("Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910)
Below are additional quotations related to the more famous and later quote. These quotes taken from a cdrom (viz., The Works of Theodore Roosevelt -- National Edition, A Product of H-Bar Enterprises Copyright 1997)
"...the man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic-the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done." (1891)
"Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger." (1894)
jhb2
|