The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
Interpretation
True character is revealed by actions taken in secrecy.
This quote suggests that a person's true character is determined by their choices and actions when they believe there will be no consequences or scrutiny. It emphasizes the importance of integrity and moral values that guide an individual's behavior, irrespective of external validation or fear of exposure. In essence, it encourages us to reflect on our ethical standards and the innate principles that govern our actions, even when no one is watching.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a leadership workshop to discuss ethical decision-making.
None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.
To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.
What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!
Rise up nimbly and go on your strange journey to the ocean of meanings.... Leave and don't look away from the sun as you go, in whose light you're sometimes crescent, sometimes full.
The idea of modernity is beginning to lose its vitality. It is losing it because modernity is no longer a critical attitude but an accepted, codified convention.
I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays itβs no good being a cabbage β unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. These days, Countess, every cabbage has its pimp.
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach.
When we are young we do not look into mirrors. It is when we are old, concerned with our name, our legend, what our lives will mean to the future. We become vain with the names we own, our claims to have been the first eyes, the strongest army, the cleverest merchant. It is when he is old that Narcissus wants a graven image of himself.
Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen?
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