A Quote by William Gilmore Simms

Distinction is an eminence that is attained but too frequently at the expense of a fireside.

William Gilmore Simms

Quote Topics

Attained Distinction Eminence Expense Frequently Too

Quote Author

William Gilmore Simms
American - Novelist
April 17, 1806 - June 11, 1870

Excellence in art is to be attained only by active effort, and not by passive impressions; by the manly overcoming of difficulties, by patient struggle against adverse circumstance, by the thrifty use of moderate opportunities. The great artists were not rocked and dandled into eminence, but they attained to it by that course of labor and discipline which no man need go to Rome or Paris or London to enter upon.

George Stillman Hillard

Paltry affectation, strained allusions, and disgusting finery are easily attained by those who choose to wear them; they are but too frequently the badges of ignorance or of stupidity, whenever it would endeavor to please.

Oliver Goldsmith

I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from an obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.

Edmund Burke

Workers all too frequently have been taking it on the chin. They're working hard and falling behind, all too frequently.

Tom Perez

When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low.

Ramakrishna

I have indeed - praise be to God - attained my desire in this world, which was to travel through the earth, and i have attained in this respect what no other person has attained to my knowledge.

Ibn Battuta

There are so many highly esteemed ones who became miserable and humiliated just because of their bad temper and morals; and humble people who have attained eminence and the highest honors because of good temper and morals.

Ali ibn Abi Talib

No sustainable prosperity or security can be attained at the expense or marginalization of others. Indeed, in today’s world, humanity will either triumph or fail as a whole.

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Towering genius...thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freeman.

Abraham Lincoln

The highest excellence is seldom attained in more than one vocation. The roads leading to distinction in separate pursuits diverge, and the nearer we approach the one, the farther we recede from the other.

Christian Nestell Bovee

Sometimes, flying feels too godlike to be attained by man. Sometimes, the world from above seems too beautiful, too wonderful, too distant for human eyes to see .

Charles Lindbergh

The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth.

Thomas Jefferson

I affect no contempt for the high eminence he [Senator Stephen Douglas] has reached. So reached, that the oppressed of my species,might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence, than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow.

Abraham Lincoln

Persons who are born too soon or born too late seldom achieve the eminence of those who are born at the right time.

Katharine Anthony

The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by mans attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than the woman. Whether deep thought, reason, or imagination or merely the use of the senses and hands.....We may also infer.....The average mental power in man must be above that of woman.