Sometimes you had to take a look at yourself and then look away.
Interpretation
Self-reflection can be challenging, and at times, it's necessary to take a step back for our own well-being.
This quote suggests the importance of self-reflection in understanding oneself, but also acknowledges that there are moments when the truth can be uncomfortable or overwhelming. Taking a moment to step away allows a person to process feelings and recover from self-examination, promoting mental health and self-acceptance.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one might say, 'Sometimes you had to take a look at yourself and then look away.'
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive.
They are sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.
I cherish the dreams of yesterday and dare not dwell on the err's of my past whose fate has been long decided, and effect I can not change. For the dreams of yesterday are the challenges of today, and the hope for tomorrow.
One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
It is the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not to venture all his eggs in one basket.
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