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?
The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.
Do not take the agenda that someone else has mapped out for your life.
Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the furthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness: a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say 'no.' But saying 'yes' begins things. Saying 'yes' is how things grow.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
Although I am ready to defend what I have said, many people expect me to defend what others have attributed to me.
Thinking consists in envisaging, realizing structural features and structural requirements; proceeding in accordance with, and determined by, these requirements; thereby changing the situation in the direction of structural improvements.
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