Best Quotes on Ability

Best quotes on Ability

A genius! For thirty-seven years I've practiced fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a genius!
- Attributed to Pablo Sarasate (1844 - 1908), Spanish violinist and composer.On being hailed as a genius by a critic.

Ability is nothing without opportunity.
- Napoleon I (1769 - 1821), French emperor.

Away with the cant of "Measures not men"!—the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. If the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.
- George Canning (1770 - 1827), British prime minister.Speech on the Army estimates.

Even if strength fail, boldness at least will deserve praise: in great endeavors even to have had the will is enough.
- Sextus Propertius, Roman poet.

I have but ninepence in ready money, but I can draw for a thousand pounds.
- Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719), English essayist, poet, and statesman.Comparing his ability to make conversation with his ability to write. Reply to a lady who complained "of his having talked little in company."

If you think you can or think you can't you're probably right.
- Henry Ford (1863 - 1947), U.S. car manufacturer.

In the end, you're measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.
- Donald Trump, U.S. real estate developer.

Instead of the question "What must I do for my employer?" substitute "What can I do?"
- Andrew Carnegie (1835 - 1919), Scottish-born U.S. industrialist and philanthropist. Speech, Curry Commercial College, Pittsburgh

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
- A. N. Whitehead (1861 - 1947), British philosopher and mathematician

It is all very well to be able to write books, but can you waggle your ears?
- J. M. Barrie (1860 - 1937), British playwright and novelist.Said to H. G. Wells.

It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.
- George Santayana (1863 - 1952), Spanish-born U.S. philosopher, poet, and novelist.

Pooh began to feel a little more comfortable, because when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
- A. A. Milne (1882 - 1956), British writer.

Take my assets—but leave me my organization and in five years I'll have it all back.
- Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.(1875 - 1966), U.S. business executive and philanthropist

The best that an individual can do is to concentrate on what he or she can do, in the course of a burning effort to do it better.
- Elizabeth Bowen (1899 - 1973), Irish novelist and short-story writer.

The difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a bit longer.
- Anonymous, Inscription on the SeaBees memorial.

The music teacher came twice each week to bridge the awful gap between Dorothy and Chopin.
- Attributed to George Ade (1866 - 1944), U.S. playwright, journalist, author, and humorist.

The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.
- H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956), U.S. journalist, critic, and editor.

The question, "Who ought to be boss?" is like asking "Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?" Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.
- Henry Ford (1863 - 1947), U.S. car manufacturer.

The superior man is distressed by his want of ability.
- Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), Chinese philosopher, administrator, and moralist.

There are limits to feats of skill, beyond which lie the realms of nonsense. Everything is quite difficult enough as it is, and what is simple actually comes hardest.
- Hans Werner Henze, German composer.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.
- William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830), British essayist and critic.

Yet had Fleming not possessed immense knowledge and an unremitting gift of observation he might not have observed the effect of the hyssop mould. "Fortune," remarked Pasteur, "favors the prepared mind."
- André Maurois (1885 - 1967), French novelist and biographer.Referring to Alexander Fleming and Louis Pasteur.