Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.
Jawaharlal NehruRead
What we really are matters more than what other people think of us.
Interpretation
Our true essence is more important than others' opinions of us.
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-identity and authenticity over external validation. It suggests that our character and the essence of who we are hold greater significance than the perceptions and judgments that others may have of us.
In practice
During a personal development seminar about self-esteem.
Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.
India has known the innocence and insouciance of childhood, the passion and abandon of youth, and the ripe wisdom of maturity that comes from long experience of pain and pleasure; and over and over a gain she has renewed her childhood and youth and age
Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.
Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.
Loyal and efficient work in a great cause, even though it may not be immediately recognized, ultimately bears fruit.
Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles.
Raw hatred took its time making an outpost of its rage and prepared for me a savage crown with rusty, bloodstained spikes. It wasn't pride that made me keep my heart at a distance from such terror, nor did I waste on revenge or the pursuit of power the forces that came from my selfish griefs or my accumulated joys. It was something else-my helplessness.
I was originally supposed to become an engineer but the thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life even more refined, with a loathsome capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me.
The river is everywhere at the same time . . . everywhere and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.
If you miss the bus, miss the train, you’d be left behind. So everyone says, let’s get on the train, let’s get on the bus and go faster and get rich... I just didn’t like that kind of lifestyle. I love to read books, to listen to music.
Inside him, twenty years dissolved and mixed into one complex, swirling whole. Everything that had accumulated over the years-- all he had seen, all the words he has spoken, all the values he had held-- all of it coalesced into one solid, thick pillar in his heart, the core of which was spinning like a potter's wheel. Wordlessly, Tengo observed the scene, as if watching the destruction and rebirth of a planet.
It must be said in addition that the men with the most scrupulous respect for embryonic life are also those who are most zealous when it comes to condemning adults to death in war.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.