“High achievements demand some other unusual qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes.”

—  George Eliot , book The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "High achievements demand some other unusual qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes." by George Eliot?
George Eliot photo
George Eliot 300
English novelist, journalist and translator 1819–1880

Related quotes

Alain de Botton photo

“Cynics are merely idealists with unusually high standards.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Variant: Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
Source: The Course of Love

Daniel Kahneman photo

“There is no evidence that risk takers in the economic domain have an unusual appetite for gambles on high stakes; they are merely less aware of risks than more timid people are.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 24, "The engine of capitalism", page 263 (ISBN 9780141033570).

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book Memory

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Memory (1996)

Jimmy Hoffa photo

“It has to be considered damned unusual that no other union was ever investigated.”

Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1982) American labor leader

Source: Hoffa The Real Story (1975), Chapter 6, The Start of the Frame-Up, p. 103

Virginia Woolf photo

“No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 3
Context: No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige?

“Virtue's a mere name,
Or 'tis high venture that achieves high aim.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Book I, epistle xvii, p. 138
Translations, The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry of Horace (1869), Epistles

Ambrose Bierce photo

“Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Ludovico Ariosto photo

“For such a sovereign joy, a prize so high
No silver and no gold could ever buy.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Ch'un almo gaudio, un così gran contento
Non potrebbe comprare oro né argento.
Canto XXXVIII, stanza 2 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

B.K.S. Iyengar photo

“His technique was physically challenging, unusual for Americans practicing yoga, but what truly set it apart was his therapeutic approach to the poses. He devised specific prescriptions, or sequences of poses, to help people with ailments such as backache, headaches, high blood pressure, diabetes and many more.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Stacie Stukin in: "10 Yogis gather around the guru"

“To maintain and continue a high volume of flow demanded organizational innovation. It would be achieved only by creating an administrative hierarchy operated by many full-time salaried managers.”

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1918–2007) American historian

Source: The Visible Hand (1977), p. 236; Cited in: Best (1990, p. 48).

Related topics