The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
Interpretation
Aiming too low can prevent us from reaching our full potential.
This quote by Michelangelo highlights the peril of setting insufficiently challenging goals. Instead of fearing failure from aiming high, we should be concerned about the complacency that comes from seeking only easy achievements, which limits our true potential and growth.
In practice
In a motivational speech to encourage students to pursue ambitious career goals.
The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem.
The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell; The sculptor's hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.
Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.
If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.
Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.
There is an angel imprisoned in it and I must set it free.
Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.
We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.
We last longer if we compete against ourselves for the good of others instead of competing against others for the good of ourselves.
No matter where you are on your journey, that's exactly where you need to be. The next road is always ahead.
Failure happens to everyone in this game. It's not something worth harping on. What is worth focusing on is how you respond to that failure.
But if it's tolerable mediocrity, and you're like, 'Well, you know it could be worse. At least I'm getting paid.' Then you wind up in a job that is slowly killing your soul and you're allowing that to happen. Comfort can be a very, very dangerous thing.
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