Mediocrity

“ For what is mediocre can neither be exalted nor charmed by values drawn from mediocrity, and is constantly in need of values drawn from super-mediocrity, for its joy, for its love of life, and for its reconciliation with drabby reality. ”

“ Without it, the brightness of other talents and attainments of a high order are often eclipsed by the clouds of error and obscured by the mists of ridicule. With it, mediocrity shines and enables the plough-boy of the field to reach the pinnacle of substantial and enduring fame, when his classic friend who has no share in consistency, but is in all other respects his superior, sinks into oblivion. ”

“ None has more cause than I to complain of nature: by refusing me everything, it has given me the sense of all I lack. At every moment I feel the weight of the complete mediocrity to which I am condemned. I know that self-content and happiness are often the price of this mediocrity of which I complain so bitterly ”

“ Business success is the slogan. And success is only to the mediocre and the vulgar. Mediocrity writes for mediocrity, and is applauded by mobs of mediocrity. To teach the truth is a great privilege, but to deceive the ignorant and to debauch the young and inexperienced is a serious offence. ”

“ And now that I am to work in the present moment I find that there will be not a few persons whom I must oblige by paying my respects to all the insignificant things which mediocrity with great self-importance will lecture about; to all the nonsense which mediocre people, by interpreting into my words their own mediocrity, will find in all I shall write; and to all the lies and calumnies to which a man is exposed against whom those two great powers in society: envy and stupidity, must of necessity conspire. ”

“ Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell—the hell of your own meanness. ”

“ Ruin a man's home, he may forget it. But excel him, do him a favor, show yourself in any light his superior, then indeed is the affront great. Mediocrity is unforgiving. We pretend to admire greatness, but we isolate it and call that isolation Fame. ”

“ Excessive praise, by blinding us to our faults, causes us to remain in the path of mediocrity, when nature has given us faculties calculated to raise us above the vulgar; by tempting us to close our ears to the harsh counsels of truth, it leads us to mistake self-esteem for genius, vanity for merit, facility for talent. ”

“ For the mediocre it is a joy to be mediocre; in them mastery in one thing, a speciality, is a natural instinct. It would be absolutely unworthy of a profound thinker to see any objection in mediocrity per se. ”

“ The Era of Mediocrity
The era of mediocrity in all things is beginning, and mediocrity freezes desire. Equality engenders uniformity; and evil is got rid of by sacrificing all that is excellent, remarkable, extraordinary. ”

“ As we stand now, our greatest temptation to mediocrity lies in our misleading content; and this content is fostered by our incorrigible habit of considering ourselves a little aside from the grand march of human events. ”

“ But while they argue thus, they allow indeed of these feelings being retrenched, though they deny that they either can or should be plucked up by the roots; so that their opinion is that mediocrity is best in everything. ”

“ In any profession he would have won success as a shining light of mediocrity, since the ruling motive of his conduct was less the ambition to excel than the moral inability to be peculiar. His mind was small and solemn, and he had worn three straight and unyielding wrinkles across his forehead in his earnest endeavour to prevent people from acting, and especially from thinking, lightly. ”

“ We are all special pleaders in the cause of mediocrity. It is conceivable that it is just from woman—who is clairvoyant in the world of suffering, and, alas! also unfortunately eager to help and save to an extent far beyond her powers—that they have learnt so readily those outbreaks of boundless sympathy which the multitude, above all the reverent multitude, overwhelms with prying and self-gratifying interpretations. ”

“ What astonishes me is that this enormous mass of commonplace verse, which burdens the postman who brings it, which it is a serious task only to get out of its wrappers and open in two or three places, is on the whole of so good an average quality. The dead level of mediocrity is in these days a table-land, a good deal above the old sea-level of laboring incapacity. ”

“ "Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity." ”

“ When we read the writings of men who have a stimulating sense of their own genius, we are struck by their nervous irritability whenever they mention “mediocrity.” The greater number of the quarrels of the authors, which the elder Disraeli chronicled, arose from the fact that the authors had the habit of accusing one another of this vice. One would suppose mediocrity to be the sum of all villainies, and that the mediocre man was continually plotting in the night watches against the innocent man of genius ”

“ Well, to-night I seem to know. If I were not such an out-and-out mediocrity, if I had really been able to achieve something, you would care for me—yes, that’s it!—as you can’t possibly care now. You would have to; you wouldn’t be able to help yourself. ”

“ They discover, these sharp onlookers and loafers, that the end is quickly approaching, that everything around them decays and produces decay, that nothing will endure until the day after tomorrow, except one species of man, the incurably MEDIOCRE. The mediocre alone have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves--they will be the men of the future, the sole survivors; "be like them! become mediocre!" is now the only morality which has still a significance, which still obtains a hearing.--But it is difficult to preach this morality of mediocrity! ”

“ Escape from the mediocrity of one to the mediocrity of many? We only multiply our feebleness, and aggravate our deficiencies. But one suggestion might be made. No profession in England has done its duty until it has furnished its victim. ”

“ "It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper." ”

“ It appears to me that, however flattering or consolatory the recital of the follies or foibles of great men may be to that mediocrity which forms the mass of mankind, the person who undertakes to cater for mere amusement withdraws something from the common stock of his country. ”

“ Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves. ”

“ What opinion can any sane man form about his own work? Some people must write stupid books just as there must be junior ops and third class poll men. Why should I complain of being among the mediocrities? If a man is not absolutely below mediocrity let him be thankful—besides, the books will have to stand by themselves some day, so the sooner they begin the better. ”

“ Mediocrity can not help disliking superiority; and as the old Northern sage declared, “the average of men is but moiety.” Moiety does not mean necessarily mediocrity, but also that which is below mediocrity. ”

“ It is interesting to observe in how many of these cases this was developed in adolescence when, with the horror of mediocrity, comes introspection, apathy, irresolution, and subjectivism. The grounds of repulsion from society at this age may be disappointed hunger for praise, wounded vanity, the reaction from over-assertion, or the nursing of some high ideals, as it is slowly realized that in society the individual cannot be absolute. ”

“ One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.” ”

“ In addition, then, to the rarity of true merit and the difficulty it has in being understood and recognized, there is the envy of thousands to be reckoned with, all of them bent on suppressing, nay, on smothering it altogether. No one is taken for what he is, but for what others make of him; and this is the handle used by mediocrity to keep down distinction, by not letting it come up as long as that can possibly be prevented. ”

“ Mediocrity, he felt sure, had oftentimes been exalted into genius, and brilliant and patriotic exclamations attributed to great men, were never uttered by them, neither was it easy he thought, to get a true historic picture of the human intellectual giant. ”

“ We wrap ourselves up in our own little vanities and weaknesses, and, fancying wealth and wisdom to be synonymous, vent our spleen against those who are resolutely striving, under the pressure of mediocrity and domestic misfortune, to obtain an honourable subsistence by their intellectual exertions. ”

“ It is evidently not difficult to imagine an instance in which the most elevated genius shall be recompensed with neglect. Mediocrity alone seems unvaryingly to escape rebuke and obloquy, it accommodates its attempts to the spirit of the age which has produced it, and adopts with mimic [Pg 389] effrontery the cant of the day and hour for which alone it lives. ”

“ Such a majority of this type will not become virtuous, but on average choose the most narrow-minded and the most worldly-wise. Regarding the most narrow-minded, I see them as those for whom mediocrity has become second nature. ”

“ Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; ”

“ Yet in contradiction to all this, the almost universal feeling appears to be, that industry can effect nothing, that eminence is the result of accident, and that every one must be content to remain just what he may happen to be. Thus multitudes, who come forward as teachers and guides, suffer themselves to be satisfied with the most indifferent attainments, and a miserable mediocrity, without so much as inquiring how they might rise higher, much less making any attempt to rise. ”

“ Placed in that respectable mediocrity which was the wish of Agar—too exalted to fear an oppressor or to invite insult; too humble to make ambition look like virtue, or to fall into that forgetfulness of his Maker, which is often the damning sin of prosperity; accustomed to those habits of wise self-control that fit the mind and body for their respective functions ”

“ Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness, as well as virtue, consists in mediocrity; ”

“ These remarks are applicable not only to advancement in political life, but to all competition for places of honor and dignity, nay, even for reputation in the world of science, literature and art. In learned societies, for example, mediocrity—that very acceptable quality—is always to the fore, whilst merit meets with tardy recognition, or with none at all. ”

“ We have to remember that all mediocrity is impersonal and that when we encourage its manifestations on printed pages we merely make mediocrity more conspicuous. Nor can that be remedied by teaching the mediocre to cultivate tricks of fashion or of vanity. There is more personality in Claude Bernard’s “Leçons de Physiologie Expérimentales,” a great critic of life and letters has pointed out, Remy de Gourmont, than in Musset’s “Confession d’un Enfant du Siècle.” For personality is not something that can be sought; it is a radiance that is diffused spontaneously. ”

“ But these impressions wear off in time; they yield before the baneful influence of daily education, which tends to drive the individual towards mediocrity, and takes out of him anything that goes to the making of an original personality. ”

“ And hence individuals below mediocrity not less in natural power than in acquired knowledge; nay, bunglers that had failed in the lowest mechanic crafts, and whose presumption is in due proportion to their want of sense and sensi bility; men, who being first scribblers from idleness and ignorance, next become libellers from envy and malevolence ”

“ Mediocrity was held by the ancient sages to be golden, that is to say, precious, praised by all men, and pleasing in all places. Read the sacred Bible, you will find the prayers of those who asked moderately were never unanswered. ”