Quotes about Ability

What is opportunity to the man who cant use it?

In one sense there will be something difficult even for God — namely, that which He has not done — not because He could not, but because He would not, do it. For with God, to be willing is to be able, and to be unwilling is to be unable; all that He has willed, however, He has both been able to accomplish, and has displayed His ability.

For there are some who have such a presumptuous opinion of their own ability that they deem themselves able to measure the nature of everything; I mean to say that, in their estimation, everything is true that seems to them so, and everything is false that does not. So that the human mind, therefore, might be freed from this presumption and come to a humble inquiry after truth, it was necessary that some things should be proposed to man by God that would completely surpass his intellect.

To produce things and to rear them, To produce, but not to take possession of them, To act, but not to rely on one's own ability, To lead them, but not to master them - This is called profound and secret virtue.

When you feel like it's too hard to obey God, remember that He will never tell you to do something without giving you the grace, power and ability to do it.

Poverty may be a privilege and even a way of life for the monk in the desert, for he has only himself to sustain and none but his god to please, but I consider poverty to be the mark of a lack of ability or a lack of ambition. I am not deficient in either of these qualities!

You are not yet able to serve men, how can you serve spirits?

The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability that he has.

There wasn't any virtue in it. The drinking or the quittin? Either one. There aint no virtue in quittin what you aint able any longer to do in the first place.

But use the opposite technique — be liberal with your encouragement, make the thing seem easy to do, let the other person know that you have faith in his ability to do it, that he has an undeveloped flair for it — and he will practise until the dawn comes in the window in order to excel.

Those two priceless abilities: first, the ability to think. Second, the ability to do things in the order of their importance.

The average person," said Samuel Vauclain, then president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, "can be led readily if you have his or her respect and if you show that you respect that person for some kind of ability." In short, if you want to improve a person in a certain aspect, act as though that particular trait were already one of his or her outstanding characteristics.