A man trying to sell a blind horse always praises its feet.
All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.
Averageness is a quality we must put up with. Men march toward civilization in column formation, and by the time the van has learned to admire the masters the rear is drawing reluctantly away from the totem pole.
Good behavior is the last refuge of mediocrity.
If you hire mediocre people, they will hire mediocre people.
In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.
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.
Little things affect little minds.
Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
Mediocrity is self-inflicted and genius is self-bestowed.
Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity.
Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down.
Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
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.
Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
Only the mediocre are always at their best.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me; leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity, my constancy, and my plain dealing; 'Tis all I have to recommend me to the esteem either of others or myself.
The best pedigree in the world won't sell a lame race horse.