Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.
Interpretation
True dignity comes from within and should protect us rather than be something we need to defend.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that instead of striving to maintain our dignity as an external facade, we should allow our inherent dignity to serve as an internal strength and guide. It emphasizes that genuine self-worth is not something to be displayed or defended at all costs but rather a natural state that can protect and define our character.
In practice
In a motivational speech to young adults about personal development and self-respect.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
I think there must be something wrong with me as a writer. Because all my friends who are writers find reasons to hate everything about their day. But I just love writing. I love starting the day with language and seeing if I can make something of it.
here is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot and not really understand anything.
The greatest knowledge we can ever have is knowing God treasures us.
Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: "Learn, guys..."
I would like to see the day when somebody would be appointed surgeon somewhere who had no hands, for the operative part is the least part of the work.
Never have anything to do with likes and dislikes. The absence of what one likes is painful, as is the presence of what one dislikes. Therefore don't take a liking to anything. To lose what one likes is hard, but there are no bonds for those who have no likes and dislikes. From preference arises sorrow, from preference arises fear, but he who is freed from preference has no sorrow and certainly no fear.
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