Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated.
Interpretation
Negative habits can have a lasting detrimental effect on a person's potential.
This quote suggests that when a person invests significant time in developing bad habits, it can lead to a decline in their personal growth and potential. The metaphor of being 'diminished' implies that the better aspects of their character and abilities can fade away, resulting in a loss of what they could have achieved in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal development, you might quote this to emphasize the importance of cultivating good habits.
Part of the reason there's an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you're in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let's say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.
I don't tell people, 'You're okay the way that you are.' That's not the right story. The right story is, 'You're way less than you could be.'
If you learn a martial art, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously, you learn to control it.
Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.
Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.
I'm interested in what motivates individuals to participate in atrocious acts to support their ideological identification.
He who represents himself has a fool for a client
I think you’ve got to be very, very careful when you start making blanket statements about what people say and think, as opposed to what they do. It’s a very, very slippery slope.
The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.
Grief's darkness fades in the sunlight of thanksgiving.
Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around.
When you repeat a mistake, it is not a mistake anymore: it is a decision.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.