Today’s topic is mediocrity…which I admit isn’t the most positive or inspirational topic.  But it serves its purpose in helping us decide how we want to live our lives.

• Good behavior is the last refuge of mediocrity. -Henry S. Haskins

• Only the mediocre are always at their best. -Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944)

• When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity. -Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

• Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. -Max Beerbohm (1872-1956)

• The world’s made up of individuals who don’t want to be heroes. -Brian Moore

• There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet’s bombast! -Jean De La Bruyere (1645-1696)

• Mediocrity is self-inflicted and genius is self-bestowed. -Walter Russell

• Let others lead small lives, but not you.  Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you. -Jim Rohn

• The highest order of mind is accused of folly, as well as the lowest. Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way. -Pascal

• Nothing in the world is more haughty than a man of moderate capacity when once raised to power. -Wessenburg

• Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe. -Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

• Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down. -William M. Winans

• The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed. -Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

• One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me. -Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

• Little things affect little minds. -Benjamin Disraeli

• All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy. -Scott Alexander

• Minds of moderate caliber ordinarily condemn everthing which is beyond their range. -Rochefoucauld

• Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. -Joseph Heller

• There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. -Peter F. Drucker

• Persevering mediocrity is much more respectable, and unspeakably more useful, than telanted inconstancy. -J. Hamilton

• A man trying to sell a blind horse always praises its feet. -German Proverb

• Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way. -Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

• If you hire mediocre people, they will hire mediocre people. -Tom Murphy

• The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind. -John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

• The art of putting into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than is achieved by true merit. -Rochefoucauld

• Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe. -Disraeli

So, what did you think of these quotes?  Any really jump out to you?  Please tell us your favorites in the comment section below.