A Quote by Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.

To take the measure of oneself by reference to one's colleagues leads to envy or complacency rather than constructive self-examination.

Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.

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Colleagues Complacency Constructive Envy Examination Leads Measure Oneself Rather Reference Self Self-Examination Take Than

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Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.
American - Celebrity
Born: March 20, 1942

Real failure comes when we consider ourselves good enough at something to be able to repeat it rather than to develop it. "Success is dangerous," the painter Pablo Picasso said. "One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility."

Joan D. Chittister

I am firmly convinced, as I have already said, that to effect any great social improvement, it is sympathy rather than self-interest, the sense of duty rather than the desire for self-advancement, that must be appealed to. Envy is akin to admiration, and it is the admiration that the rich and powerful excite which secures the perpetuation of aristocracies.

Henry George

For all the unkind things said about envy, it would only be fair to acknowledge that not all envy is destructive. If envy leads us to work hard and to improve our skills, it becomes a stimulant to self-improvement. God has given us no quality that cannot be used for good.

Sidney Greenberg

Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.

Baruch Spinoza

Being true to oneself more often leads one toward success rather than away from it.

Mike Svob

Once we have a firm practice of compassion our state of mind becomes stronger which leads to inner peace, giving rise to self-confidence, which reduces fear. This makes for constructive members of the community. Self-centredness on the other hand leads to distance, suspicion, mistrust and loneliness, with unhappiness as the result.

Dalai Lama

I'm not a completely envy-free zone - I envy 25-year-old men with magnificent bodies - but when I look at my colleagues on the whole, I don't think I have much to envy!

David Starkey

You must learn to perceive as your self that which lies outside you. Looking only within oneself leads to a hardening in oneself, to a higher egotism.

Rudolf Steiner

Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses.

Eric Maisel

I realized that we're now at a point of self-reference with the Internet culture that there's almost no there left, you know? It's important to make new things. It's important to make culture, rather than simply reference it. I love a good cultural reference, and it's one of the great joys in my life, but it has to all be in balance with the core job, which is to make something new. And that sort of brings me around to why I started talking about my fondness for marijuana.

John Hodgman

[To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

Flannery O'Connor

Our examination of computer viruses leads us to the conclusion that they are very close to what we might define as "artificial life." Rather than representing a scientific achievement, this probably represents a flaw in our definition.

Gene Spafford

The journey into self-love and self-acceptance must begin with self-examination. ... until you take the journey of self-reflection, it is almost impossible to grow or learn in life.

Iyanla Vanzant

Many great persons have been of opinion that love is no other thing than complacency itself, in which they have had much appearance of reason. For not only does the movement of love take its origin from the complacency which the heart feels at the first approach of good, and find its end in a second complacency which returns to the heart by union with the thing beloved--but further, it depends for its preservation on this complacency, and can only subsist through it as through its mother and nurse; so that as soon as the complacency ceases, love ceases.

Saint Francis de Sales

Self-examination is the process of accountability to your soul...It is far better to "become" your truth than to speak your truth. Self-examination is the practice of becoming your truth.

Caroline Myss

You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.

Ernest Hemingway

A Quote by Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.

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