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Remember the parable of talents—the story of the three servants who had received talents, five, two and one respectively? When their master returned they all gave account of their stewardship. The first two had doubled their capital. Each of them said so in sixteen words and their work was pronounced, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.' The third servant had accomplished absolutely nothing but his report took forty-three words, three times as long as each of the other two reports. Don’t be like servant number three. Make good! Don’t explain your failure! Do the thing you are expected to do! Then you won’t have to explain why you didn't, couldn’t, wouldn’t, or shouldn’t. Efficiency! That is the soul-satisfying joy of making good. Doing your work just a little better than anyone else gives you the margin of success. Making good required no explanation. Failure required forty-three words.

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Jun 05, 2026

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Quote Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 - July 8, 1822; pronounced /ˌpɝsi ˌbɪʃ ˈʃɛli/) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias , Ode to the West Wind , To a Skylark , and The Masque of Anarchy . However, his major works were long visionary poems including Alastor , Adonais , The Revolt of Islam , Prometheus Unbound and the unfinished The Triumph of Life.

Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong skeptical voice, made him a notorious and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations of poets, including the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and poets in other languages such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy. He was also admired by Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and Bertrand Russell. Famous for his association with his equally short-lived contemporaries John Keats and Lord Byron, he was married to novelist Mary Shelley.

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