To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.
Charles Horton CooleyRead
Each man must have his I; it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble.
Interpretation
Individuals need a personal identity to thrive; without it, they may create conflict.
In this quote, Charles Horton Cooley emphasizes the fundamental need for self-identity and recognition within societal structures. He suggests that every person requires a sense of self, akin to a necessity like food, and when traditional institutions fail to accommodate this identity, individuals may feel alienated and resort to disruptive behavior in search of fulfillment.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth and self-awareness, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of finding one's identity.
To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.
If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.
We have no higher life that is really apart from other people. It is by imagining them that our personality is built up; to be without the power of imagining them is to be a low-grade idiot.
The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.
The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves but the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind.
By recognizing a favorable opinion of yourself, and taking pleasure in it, you in a measure give yourself and your peace of mind into the keeping of another, of whose attitude you can never be certain. You have a new source of doubt and apprehension.
The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.
Gentlemen, I am tormented by questions; answer them for me.
I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane.
The bustle in a house The morning after death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon earth,-- The sweeping up the heart, And putting love away We shall not want to use again Until eternity
The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralize about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.
Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment but nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.
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