Sunday, January 31, 2010 – Utter Confidence
In some situations I was difficult, in odd moments impossible, in rare moments, loathsome, but at my best unapproachably great. ~ Oscar Levant
For one year and one month Oscar Levant declared my house his house,” Harpo Marx once recalled. “For one year and one month he ate my food, played my piano, ran up my phone bills, burned cigarette holes in my landlady’s furniture, monopolized my record player and my coffee pot, gave his guests the run of the joint, insulted my guests, and never stopped complaining. He was an egomaniac. He was a leech and a lunatic – but I loved the guy.”
A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her. ~ David Brinkley
It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to. ~ W. C. Fields
Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people. ~ André Dubus
We probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of us if we could know how seldom they do. ~ Olin Miller
If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. ~ Vincent Van Gogh
I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly. ~ Buckminster Fuller
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others. ~ Mark Twain
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. ~ Anaïs Nin
The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable. ~ Paul Tillich
Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being. ~ Michel de Montaigne
The things we hate about ourselves aren’t more real than things we like about ourselves. ~ Ellen Goodman
It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. ~ Sally Kempton
I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
Life marks us all down, so it’s just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook
Self-love seems so often unrequited. ~ Anthony Powell
Conceit is bragging about yourself. Confidence means you believe you can get the job done. ~ Johnny Unitas
You have to do a little bragging on yourself even to your relatives – man doesn’t get anywhere without advertising. ~ John Nance Garner
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there. ~ H. L. Mencken
When you talk to the half-wise, twaddle; when you talk to the ignorant, brag; when you talk to the sagacious, look very humble and ask their opinion. ~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
The American mood, perhaps even the American character, has changed. There are few manifestations any longer of the old American self-assurance which so irritated Dickens. Instead, there is a sense of frustration so perceptible that even our politicians have attempted to exploit it. ~ Archibald MacLeish
Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one’s poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed – but never the husband). ~ James Thurber
Poise: the ability to be ill at ease inconspicuously. ~ Earl Wilson
I have nothing but confidence in you, and very little of that. ~ Groucho Marx
Just Above Sunset 