Natural Endowment Quotes

• Repartee is altogether a natural endowment, and is the lightning of the mind.

  Alfred de Musset

  Mind, Lightning, Natural

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• A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement and, probably, income; luckiest in their educational and career opportunities; and luckiest in so many other ways difficult to enumerate - these are the folks who reap the largest rewards.

  Ben Bernanke

  Encouragement, Educational, Opportunity

  "The Anniversary: Why Bull Durham Is the Greatest Sports Movie Ever Made" by Stephen Marche, www.esquire.com. June 14, 2013.

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• Perfection does not exist; to understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.

  Alfred de Musset

  Perfection, Intelligence, Triumph

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• Vanity and dignity are incompatible with each other; vain women are almost sure to be vulnerable.

  Alfred de Musset

  Vanity, Dignity, Vulnerable

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• As it is in the body, so it is in the mind; practice makes it what it is, and most even of those excellencies, what are looked on as natural endowments, will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch, only by repeated actions.

  John Locke

  Exercise, Practice, Mind

  John Locke (1854). “Locke's essays. An essay concerning human understanding. And A treatise on the conduct of the understanding. With the author's last additions”, p.489

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  Love is man's natural endowment, but he doesn't know how to use it. He refuses to recognize the power of love because of his love of power.

  Dick Gregory

  Wisdom, Fun, Love Is

  Dick Gregory (1968). “The shadow that scares me”

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• The parent must not give in to his desire to try to create the child he would like to have, but rather help the child to develop--in his own good time--to the fullest, into what he wishes to be and can be, in line with his natural endowment and as the consequence of his unique life in history.

  Bruno Bettelheim

  Children, Unique, Giving

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• ... it matters not what natural endowment a race may have if it prostitutes itself to the service of death.

  Rebecca West

  Death, Race, May

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.194, Open Road Media

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• The effusions of genius are entitled to admiration rather than applause, as they are chiefly the effect of natural endowment, and sometimes appear to be almost involuntary.

  William Benton Clulow

  Genius, Admiration, Sometimes

  William Benton Clulow (1843). “Aphorisms and Reflections: A Miscellany of Thought and Opinion”, p.338

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• To be united to God in unity of person was not fitting to human flesh, according to its natural endowments, since it was above his dignity; nevertheless, it was fitting that God, by reason of his infinite goodness, should unite it to himself for human salvation.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Unity, Flesh, Dignity

  St Thomas Aquinas (2013). “Summa Theologica, Volume 4 (Part III, First Section)”, p.2020, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Command is a mountaintop. The air breathed there is different, and the perspectives seen there are different, from those of the valley of obedience. The passion for order and the genius for construction, which are part of man's natural endowment, get full play there. The man who has grown great sees from the top of his tower what he can make, if he so wills, of the swarming masses below him.

  Bertrand de Jouvenel

  Passion, Men, Order

  Bertrand de Jouvenel (1949). “On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its Growth”

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• There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into a creative impulse.

  Eric Hoffer

  Creative, Soul, Way

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Everybody allows that to know any other science you must have first studied it, and that you can only claim to express a judgment upon it in virtue of such knowledge. Everybody allows that to make a shoe you must have learned and practised the craft of the shoemaker, though every man has a model in his own foot, and possesses in his hands the natural endowments for the operations required. For philosophy alone, it seems to be imagined, such study, care, and application are not in the least requisite

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Philosophy, Men, Hands

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1904). “The Logic of Hegel”

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