Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. SayersRead
Those who make some other person their job... are dangerous.
Interpretation
Relying too heavily on others for purpose can lead to harm.
This quote reflects the importance of personal responsibility and the dangers of becoming overly dependent on others for one's sense of identity or purpose. When individuals make others their main focus, they risk losing their own autonomy and becoming harmful to themselves and those around them, as it can lead to toxic relationships and a lack of personal fulfillment.
In practice
In a motivational speech about self-empowerment.
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
But suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, "suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?" "You can usually tell," said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes fundamental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is.
. . . the fellow's got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God's a secretion of the liver--all right once in a way, but there's no need to keep on about it. There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.
You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched.
None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.
What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.
There are some dead who are more alive than the living.
Go deep into meditation. and be meditation I mean silence, awareness, witnessing. You can meditate any time of the day, you can meditate working, walking, doing things. Meditation is not something separate from life; it should not be separate, otherwise it remains a little artificial. Meditation should be spread all over life. You should walk in meditation, you should sit in meditation; that means silently, fully aware. Slowly slowly it becomes your very flavour, then the bridge is created.
Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.
To me spirituality needs an honest individuality. It does not allow any kind of dependence. It creates a freedom for itself, whatever the cost. It is never in the crowd but alone, because the crowd has never found any truth. The truth has been found only in people's aloneness.
The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.
The realisation that our small planet is only one of many worlds gives mankind the perspective it needs to realise sooner that our own world belongs to all its creatures.
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