The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.
Seneca – Ability
In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.
George Eliot – Quotation, Ability
Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.
Samuel Johnson – Ability, History
Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.
William Hazlitt – Ability, Competence
The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success.
Henry Ward Beecher – Ability
Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
Cicero – Ability
A genius can’t be forced; nor can you make an ape an alderman.
Thomas Somerville – Ability
Ability is of little account without opportunity.
Napoleon Bonaparte – Ability
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
Henry David Thoreau – Ability
Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.
Arthur Schopenhauer – Ability
Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.
John Wooden – Ability
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
Ralph Waldo Emerson – Ability
People are so constituted that everybody would rather undertake what they see others do, whether they have an aptitude for it or not.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Ability
Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Ability
Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.
