Ability Quotations - Quotations

Guest Author - Danielle Hollister

"All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one... characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers."
-- Anonymous
"God does not ask about our ability, but our availability."
-- Anonymous
"Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study."
-- Francis Bacon
"Knowing what you can not do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, thats good taste."
-- Lucille Ball
"Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there."
-- Josh Billings
"Ability is of little account without opportunity."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
"Men take only their needs into consideration, never their abilities."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
"He'll find a way."
-- Sir James Matthew Barrie
"The world is like a board with holes in it, and the square men have got into the round holes, and the round into the square."
-- Bishop George Berkeley
"Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability."
-- Edmund Burke
"He could raise scruples dark and nice, And after solve 'em in a trice; As if Divinity had catch'd The itch, on purpose to be scratched."
-- Samuel Butler
Tenacity
"For as our modern wits behold, Mounted a pick-back on the old, Much farther off, much further he, Rais'd on his aged Beast, could see."
-- Samuel Butler
"If you cant learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
"The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains "
-- Ken Carey
"You are a devil at everything, and there is no kind of thing in the 'versal world but what you can turn your hand into. "
-- Cervantes
"I add this also, that natural ability without education has oftener raised man to glory and virtue, than education without natural ability."
-- Cicero
" The dwarf sees farther than the giant, when he has the giant's shoulders to mount on. "
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
" Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire. "
-- John Dryden
"To know how to hide one's ability is great skill."
-- Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
"The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary."
-- Thomas A. Edison
"The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other."
-- Douglas Everett
Learn
"People are always ready to admit a mans ability after he gets there."
-- Bob Edwards
"Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A man must not deny his manifest abilities, for that is to evade his obligations."
-- William Feather
"If they try to rush me, I always say, I've only got one other speed and its slower."
-- Glenn Ford
"It is all one to me if a man comes from Sing Sing or Harvard. We hire a man, not his history."
-- Henry Ford
"The question "Who ought to be boss?" is like as "Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?" Obviously, the man who can sing tenor."
-- Henry Ford
"Ability will never catch up with the demand for it."
-- Malcolm S. Forbes
"As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities."
-- James A. Froude
"There is no need to show your ability before everyone. "
-- James Anthony Froude
"Tis skill not strength that governs a ship."
-- Thomas Fuller
"The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators."
-- Edward Gibbon
Power
"Life has been compared to a race, but the allusion improves by observing, that the most swift are usually the least manageable and the most likely to stray from the course. Great abilities have always been less serviceable to the possessors than moderate ones."
-- Oliver Goldsmith
"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the worlds problems."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"The carpenter is not the best who makes more chips than all the rest."
-- Arthur Guiterman
"There is something that is much more scarce, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability."
-- Robert Half
"Every person is responsible for all the good within the scope of his abilities, and for no more, and none can tell whose sphere is the largest."
-- Gail Hamilton
"Skill and confidence are an unconquered army."
-- George Herbert
"A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much."
-- Homer
"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
-- Elbert Hubbard
"There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability."
-- Elbert Hubbard
"It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test."
-- Elbert Hubbard
"From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned."
-- Edward Hand
Precision
" When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them."
-- Samuel Johnson
" To the very last, he [Napolean] had a kind of idea, that, namely, of "la carriere ouverte aux talents"--the tools to him that can handle them. "
-- John Gibson Lockhart
"The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do."
-- Orison Swett Marden
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
-- Karl Marx
"Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short."
-- John Henry Newman
"A Traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedaemonian, "I do not believe you can do as much." "True," said he. "but every goose can." "
-- Plutarch
"Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work."
-- John G. Pollard
"Behind every able man, there are always other able men."
-- Chinese Proverb
"Everyone must row with the oars he has."
-- English Proverb
"One thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy."
-- Quintilian
"If there be anything that can be called genius, it consists chiefly in ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind, till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides."
-- Theodor Reik
Strive - Race
"Put yourself in a state of mind where you say to yourself, "Here is an opportunity for me to celebrate like never before, my own power, my own ability to get myself to do whatever is necessary."
-- Anthony Robbins
"Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest."
-- Jean Paul Richter
"Anything youre good at contributes to happiness."
-- Bertrand Russell
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. "
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one. "
-- Sam Rayburn
"A dwarf is small even if he stands on a mountain; a colossus keeps his height, even if he stands in a well."
-- Seneca
"We shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole."
-- Sydney Smith
"Pigmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves."
-- Didacus Stella
"Ability is the art of getting credit for all the home runs somebody else hits."
-- Casey Stengel
"Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities."
-- Arthur Schopenhauer
"Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability."
-- George Bernard Shaw
Meditation II (silver foil stamped & ...
"The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered."
-- Sir William Temple
"He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"Read my little fable: He that runs may read. Most can raise the flowers now, For all have got the seed."
-- Lord Alfred Tennyson
"Wicked people are always surprised to find ability in those that are good."
-- Marquis de Vauvenargues
"They are able because they think they are able."
-- Virgil
"The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts."
-- Booker T. Washington
"Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there."
-- John Wooden
"Ability is a poor mans wealth."
-- M. Wren
"Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent. "
-- Horace Walpole
"I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability."
-- Oscar Wilde
"We all have ability. The difference is how we use it."
-- Stevie Wonder
Inspirational Quotations ...