A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness.
Interpretation
People who are unwilling to share often lack their own resources or richness in life. Being miserly reflects deeper personal emptiness.
This quote by Eric Hoffer suggests that those who hesitate or refuse to share their resources or experiences with others tend to possess little themselves. It implies that a reluctance to give may stem from an impoverished inner life, where miserly behavior serves as an outward indication of emotional or spiritual scarcity.
In practice
During a seminar on personal growth, this quote could be used to emphasize the importance of generosity in achieving fulfillment.
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.
Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path.
I condemn equally those who choose to praise man, those who choose to condemn him and those who choose to divert themselves, and I can only approve of those who seek with groans.
Thereβs nothing quite as frightening as someone who knows they are right.
A man may be carried on in a constant course of mortification all his days; and yet perhaps never enjoy a good day of peace and consolation.
If you can let go of (the Tao) with your mind and surround it with your heart, it will live inside you forever.
despite all our desperate, eternal attempts to separate, contain and mend, categories always leak.
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