Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.
William HazlittRead
The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.
Interpretation
The desire for fame is closely tied to the pursuit of excellence and recognition over time.
In this quote, Hazlitt suggests that the yearning for fame is fundamentally linked to a desire for excellence. He argues that this ambition is validated by time, indicating that true excellence is acknowledged and appreciated in the long run, beyond mere fleeting recognition.
In practice
This quote can be used in a graduation speech to inspire students to pursue excellence.
Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.
The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.
Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.
We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.
Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.
All love craves unity. As the highest peak of love in the human order is the unity of husband and wife in the flesh, so the highest unity in the Divine order is the unity of the soul and Christ in communion.
I can admire the solemn and stately language of worship that recognizes the greatness of God, but it will not warm my heart or express my soul until it has also blended therewith the joyful nearness of that perfect love that casts out fear and ventures to speak with our Father in heaven as a child speaks with its father on earth. My brother, no veil remains.
How can so much beauty hide such a bruised and steely heart, and why must I love him, why must I lean in my weariness upon his irresistible yet indomitable strength? Is he not the wizend funeral spirit of a dead man in a child's clothes?
The truly good gaze upon everything with love and understanding.
Never having been in love, this is going to be a real trick. I think of my parents. The way my father never failed to bring her gifts from the woods. The way my mother's face would light up at the sound of his boots at the door. The way she almost stopped living when he died.
Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes.
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