Ability Quotes

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Franz Kafka

Henry David Thoreau

Oscar Wilde

Karl Marx

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Abraham Lincoln

Douglas Adams

Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation—the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Capital is money, capital is commodities. … By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious effort.

Henry David Thoreau

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Abraham Lincoln

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty.

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).

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee, and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.

John D. Rockefeller

It is said the warrior's is the twofold Way of pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways. Even if a man has no natural ability he can be a warrior by sticking assiduously to both divisions of the Way. Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.

Miyamoto Musashi

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.

Flannery O'Connor

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. Simplification is the essence of abstraction from which objective values are not necessarily eliminated.

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them — a diminishing number in my case.

When I think of vision, I have in mind the ability to see above and beyond the majority.

Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.

Thomas J. Watson

Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal.

Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.

Barbara Johnson

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow's viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

Harry S. Truman

In England, the profession of the law is that which seems to hold out the strongest attraction to talent, from the circumstance, that in it ability, coupled with exertion, even though unaided by patronage, cannot fail of obtaining reward.

Charles Babbage

Charm... is the ability to make someone else think that both of you are pretty wonderful.

Kathleen Winsor

War is a beastly business, it is true, but one proof we are human is our ability to learn, even from it, how better to exist

M. F. K. Fisher

Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

There are evils, as someone has pointed out, that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever — money, for instance, or war.

More often than not, one meets technicians, nimble keyboardists by profession, who … indeed astound us with their prowess without ever touching our sensibilities.... stirring performance depends upon an alert mind which is willing to follow reasonable precepts in order to reveal the content of the compositions.
What comprises good performance? The ability through singing or playing to make the ear conscious of the true content and affect of a composition. Any passage can be so radically changed by modifying its performance that it will be scarcely recognizable.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach