Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.
Interpretation
Self-denial is essential for true self-control and responsible governance of oneself.
In this quote, Chesterton emphasizes the importance of self-denial as a fundamental aspect of self-governance. To effectively lead and manage one's life, individuals must practice restraint and understand the value of sacrificing immediate pleasures for long-term benefits. This ability to control one's desires and impulses is crucial for making wise and responsible decisions that align with personal values and goals.
In practice
This quote could be used in a leadership seminar to stress the importance of self-discipline.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
That which in mean men we entitle patience is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.
We should cultivate the optimistic temperament, and endeavour to see the good that dwells in everything. If we sit down and lament over the imperfection of our bodies and our minds, we profit nothing; it is the heroic endeavour to subdue adverse circumstances that carries our spirit upward.
Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
I often don't know what I'll be working on next year or a year from now. There is often a chance meeting, or something that I worked on 10 years ago suddenly becomes important again.
It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth.
There is nothing like first-hand evidence.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.