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Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.
Baltasar Gracian ---

Put yourself on view. This brings your talents to light.
Baltasar Gracian ---

Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What's a sun-dial in the shade?
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790) ---

If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don't hoard it. Don't dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.
Brendan Francis ---

Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC) ---


Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

Erica Jong ----


Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel ---

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

Henry Van Dyke ---


We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Mark Twain's Autobiography ---


You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through.

Rosalynn Carter (1927 - ) ---


Toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other.

Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD) ---


Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 - 1930), (Sherlock Holmes) Valley of Fear, 1915 ---


Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent.

Sophia Loren (1934 - ) ---


Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for and you will succeed.

Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845) ---


Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

Helen Keller (1880 - 1968), The Open Door (1957) ---


Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was belief in facts.

John Gunther (1901 - 1970) ---



In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) ---



Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.

Unknown ---


If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights.

Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), 'Les Malheureux' ---



I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936) ---



You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.

Beverly Sills (1929 ---