Half talent is no talent. [ Lavater ]

Mediocrity is beneath a brave soul. [ Lady Blessington ]

Respectable mediocrity offends nobody. [ Brougham ]

We encourage one another in mediocrity. [ Lamb ]

Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity.
The majority have established this. [ Pascal ]

Mediocrity is mean, and below an exalted spirit. [ Proverb ]

Mediocrity makes the most of its native possessions. [ Pascal ]

Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe. [ Disraeli ]

Mediocrity is excellence to the eyes of mediocre people. [ Joubert ]

In society mediocrity is not alone dangerous, it is fatal. [ Mme. de Maintenon ]

Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men. [ Horace ]

I find that most people are made only for the common uses of life. [ John Foster ]

A quiet mediocrity is still to be preferred before a troubled superfluity. [ Suckling ]

One of the marks of a mediocrity of intellect is to be given to story-telling. [ La Bruyère ]

Our century leans neither toward evil nor toward good: it goes toward mediocrity. [ A. de Gasparin ]

Minds of moderate calibre ordinarily condemn everything which is beyond their range. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Most people would succeed in small things, if they were not troubled with great ambitions. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Persevering mediocrity is much more respectable, and unspeakably more useful, than talented inconstancy. [ Dr. James Hamilton ]

Mediocrity is less sensitive than genius, and therefore suffers less under nearly any possible exigency. [ William Winter ]

The art of putting well into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than true merit achieves. [ Rochefoucauld ]

No reports are more readily believed than those which disparage genius and soothe envy of conscious mediocrity. [ Macaulay ]

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking. [ La Bruyère ]

Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but the weak flavor of genius in a person essentially common is detestable. [ Holmes ]

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity. [ Montaigne ]

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself. [ Lamb ]

No wonder we are all more or less pleased with mediocrity, since it leaves us at rest, and gives the same comfortable feeling as when one associates with his equals. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions. [ Gladstone ]

How many of these minds are there to whom scarcely any good can be done! They have no excitability. You are attempting to kindle a fire of stone. You must leave them as you find them, in permanent mediocrity. [ John Foster ]

The highest order of mind is accused of folly, as well as the lowest. Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it Axes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way. [ Pascal ]

We meet with few utterly dull and stupid souls: the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between, these two extremes: the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, and the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth. [ La Bruyere ]

A literary career is a more thorny path than that which leads to fortune. If you have the misfortune not to rise above mediocrity, you feel mortified for life; and if you are successful, a host of enemies spring up against you. Thus you find yourself on the brink of an abyss between contempt and hatred. [ Voltaire ]

There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quantum that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the First and Louis the Sixteenth been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads. [ Colton ]

The maxim of Cleobulus, Mediocrity is best, has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits. [ Dr. Johnson ]