If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Interpretation
Self-respect is vital for healthy relationships with others.
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-care and self-respect as a foundation for how others treat us. Maya Angelou suggests that if we do not value and take care of ourselves, we cannot reasonably expect others to do so, reflecting the idea that our treatment of ourselves sets a standard for those around us.
In practice
In a conversation about mental health, one might say this quote to emphasize the importance of prioritizing self-love.
I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at commensurate speed.
The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.
I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed. This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming?
I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know how not to.
I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people - one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion's den. You can't just play around with all those big cats - you've got to take somebody on.
In order to be a mentor, and an effective one, one must care. You must care. You don't have to know how many square miles are in Idaho, you don't need to know what is the chemical makeup of chemistry, or of blood or water. Know what you know and care about the person, care about what you know and care about the person you're sharing with.
If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all.
A lord may love the men that he commands, but he cannot be a friend to them. One day he may need to sit in judgement on them, or send them forth to die.
We often don't realize what our action & our inaction do to people we think we will never see & never know.
People talk about sexual assault like it's a bad habit that men have.
I think that everyone should get married at least once, so you can see what a silly, outdated institution it is.
I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.
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