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?
Accept that you are enough. You don't need to be anything that you are not.
Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
The man who gives way to anger, or hatred, or any other passion, cannot work; he only breaks himself to pieces, and does nothing practical. It is the calm, forgiving, equable, well-balanced mind that does the greatest amount of work.
I used to believe everything my brother told me, because he was older and I figured he knew more about the world. But as it turns out, being a grown-up doesn’t mean you’re fearless. It just means you fear different things.
So much the worse for those who fear wine, for it is because they have some bad thoughts which they are afraid the liquor will extract from their hearts.
Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity.
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