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.
All religions promise a reward beyond life, in eternity, for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.
The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It's not that there's something new in our way of thinking - it's that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
Cheat? Good heavens, this is an amateur cricket match amongst leading prep schools, I'm an Englishman and a schoolmaster supposedly setting an example to his young charges. We are playing the most artistic and beautiful game ever devised. Of course I'll cunting well cheat. Now, give me my robe and put on my crown. I have immortal longings in me.
How can non-existence get sick of itself? Everytime you wake up, you appear again out of nowhere. And so does everything else. Death just means the replacement of the usual morning waking with something else, something quite impossible even to think about. We don't even have the instrument to do it, because our mind & our world are the same thing.
Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.
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