Your reputation is in the hands of others. That's what the reputation is. You can't control that. The only thing you can control is your character.
Interpretation
Your character is what you can control, while your reputation is shaped by others' opinions.
This quote emphasizes the importance of understanding the distinction between character and reputation. While reputation is influenced by how others perceive you, and thus outside of your direct control, your character—defined by your values and actions—is something you can shape and define for yourself. Focusing on building a strong character leads to a positive reputation over time, even if it may not always be immediately recognized by others.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about personal integrity.
What is hope but a feeling of optimism, a thought that says things will improve, it won't always be bleak, there's a way to rise above the present circumstances. Hope is an internal awareness that you do not have to suffer forever, and that somehow, somewhere there is a remedy for despair that you will come upon if you can only maintain this expectancy in your heart.
Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.
Live forgiveness every day rather than just talking about it on Sunday.
Say to Yourself when Someone Else is Criticizing U, 'What U Think of Me is None of My Business'
Conflict is a violation of harmony. If you participate in it, you're part of the problem, not the solution.
My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I've had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm's way until they could be their own guides.
There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.
Sad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do because he is the child of God.
There's no such thing as turning back the hands of time, and it makes me crazy that we live in a society where that's sold to women—that we're supposed to believe that if we're getting older, we've failed somehow, that we have failed by not staying young. I wish that women would let other women age gracefully and allow them to get older and know that as we get older, we become wiser.
If it's painful, you become willing not just to endure it but also to let it awaken your heart and soften you. You learn to embrace it.
Vengeance is having a videotape planted in your soul that cannot be turned off. It plays the painful scene over and over again inside your mind...And each time it plays you feel the clap of pain again...Forgiving turns off the videotape of pained memory Forgiving sets you free.
Love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is only your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else.
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