Reputation is favorable notoriety as distinguished from fame, which is permanent approval of great deeds and noble thoughts by the best intelligence of mankind.
Interpretation
Reputation is about how others view us based on our actions, while fame is the lasting recognition for significant accomplishments.
This quote by George William Curtis highlights the distinction between reputation and fame. Reputation refers to the perception of an individual based on their actions and the impressions they leave on others, emphasizing that it is favorable notoriety. In contrast, fame is depicted as a more enduring recognition, tied to noteworthy achievements and moral integrity, validated by the collective judgment of the best minds in society. Curtis prompts us to reflect on how our actions contribute to our reputation while also recognizing the deeper, lasting impact of our more significant deeds.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of personal integrity in leadership, one might say, 'As George William Curtis said, 'Reputation is favorable notoriety...'
There is very little moral mixture in the 'Antislavery' feeling of this country. A great deal is abstract philanthropy; part is hatred of slaveholders; a great part is jealousy for white labor, very little is consciousness of wrong done and the wish to right it.
I think that to have known one good, old man-one man, who, through the chances and mischances of a long life, has carried his heart in his hand, like a palm-branch, waving all discords into peace-helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in each other more than many sermons
The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose.
Some people, with a certain nostalgia, the worshippers and admirers of the colonial system, cherish and nurse its structures instead of smashing them. This is typical of a mentality in bondage to decadent values, negative values - counter-revolutionary values.
Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on which all our happiness depends cannot be found in any other way.
The Lord withdraws when He is denied, and what is taken by the undeserving does not avail them unto salvation, since the saving grace is turned into ashes and holiness departs.
This life in us; however low it flickers or fiercely burns, is still a divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives never so humane and enlightened; To suppose otherwise is to countenance a death-wish; Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.
I was sure that somewhere a grandiose carnival was going on in the sky, and I was missing it.
The problems of a period are the existential crises of what can be but hasn't yet been resolved; and regardless of how seriously we take that word 'resolved,' if there were not some new possibility, there would be no crisis - there would be only despair.
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