Self and Self-Management quotes

This beautiful creature combines the habits of the butterfly with the habits of the moth. For whereas the moth flies only by night and the butterfly flies only by day, the social butterfly flies both by day and by night.

She is universally despised and condemned, and almost universally envied: one of the strangest among the many strange facts of natural history.

She lives with a single purpose—to be for ever in the movement—not any particular movement, but the movement, which is a grand combined tendency comprising all lesser tendencies.

It does, but the reason is not valid.

Risk is the very essence of life, and the total absence of danger is equal to death.

I do not say that to follow an unsatisfactory vocation and to fail in it is better than to follow no vocation. But I am inclined to say that any marriage is better than no marriage—for both sexes.

For a voice within him, which none else can hear, but which he cannot choke, will constantly be murmuring:

‘You lacked courage. You hadn’t the pluck. You ran away.’

And it is happier to be unhappy in the ordinary sense all one’s life than to have to listen at the end to that dreadful interior verdict.

‘You lacked courage. You hadn’t the pluck. You ran away.’

And it is happier to be unhappy in the ordinary sense all one’s life than to have to listen at the end to that dreadful interior verdict.

‘I shall do as little as I can, because I’m not going to be taken advantage of.’ And they almost invariably end by doing more than they can, and by insisting on being taken advantage of.

Human nature is mean, but it is also noble.

Axiom: The preliminary trouble and weariness and annoyance incidental to getting the work are themselves a necessary and inevitable part of war-work, just as much as bandaging the brows of heroes.

Axiom: The preliminary trouble and weariness and annoyance incidental to getting the work are themselves a necessary and inevitable part of war-work, just as much as bandaging the brows of heroes.

Life is a continual passage from one illusion to another.

No sooner has the eager volunteer found out that the desire to help is apt to be treated as evidence of a criminal disposition, and that war-work is as shy as deer in the depths of a forest—no sooner has he or she discovered these …

They thus obtain for a period the sensation of benevolence without any ultimate corresponding sacrifice. This is the nearest approach, that I know of, to giving something and yet sticking to it; but it has no relation whatever to war-work.

Axiom: If a tea-cup is full you cannot pour anything into it until you have poured something out.

The next, and the next to the last, illusion to go is a masterpiece of simple-mindedness, and yet nearly all who take up war-work are found at first to be under its sway.

You ought to imagine what would happen if every member of the Committee, like you, resigned because Mr. Y was impossible, and thus left the impossible Mr. Y in possession of the table and the secretary.

Axiom: The most valorous and morally valuable war-work is the work of working with impossible people.

And may I warn you that you will later on, if you succeed as a war-worker, encounter more terrible phenomena than Mr. Y, who at the worst can always be out-voted?

The highest hope of the average war-worker must be to escape censure. Official food-controllers, who are possibly the supreme type of war-worker, are thankful if they escape with their heads. And herein is a great lesson.

Axiom: The reward of war-work will be in the treaty of peace.

LET us consider, first, a strange quality of the written word.

The spoken word is bad enough.

Such things as misfortunes, blunders, sins, and apprehensions become more serious when they have been described even in conversation. A woman who secretly fears cancer will fear it much more once she has mentioned her fear to another person.

You may sometimes seem to be putting energy into him, but you are not; you are simply setting his original energy free, applying a match to the coal or fanning the fire.

An individual is an island on whose rocky shores no ship can ever land that most mysterious commodity—energy.

You may transfuse blood, but not the inexplicable force that makes the heart beat and defies circumstance.

‘As regards the first part of your question, the usual index of the amount of energy possessed by an individual is the intensity of the desires of that individual.

It is desire that uses energy.

Strong desires generally betoken much energy, and they are definite desires. Without desires, energy is rendered futile. Nobody will consume energy in action unless he desires to perform the action, either for itself or as a means to a desired end.

‘

Imagine what the world would be like if we were all ruthlessly set on “succeeding”! It would be like a scene of carnage.

And it is conceivable that you are, in fact, much more efficient than you think, and that you are wasting much less time than you think, and that you are employing much more energy than you think.

This long speech which I made to the young, dissatisfied creature might have been extremely effective if I could have made it to her face. I ought, however, to mention that I did not make it to her face.

I have been reporting a harangue which I delivered in the sleepless middle of the night to her imagined image.

It is easier to be effective in reply when the argumentative opponent is not present.

But, did any one suggest that she ought to be confined in a lunatic asylum? Assuredly not. If ever she goes to a lunatic asylum it will be as a visitor, to smile superiorly at the man whose welfare depends utterly on hot toast.

From the moral height of a cigarette she will pity hot toast.

Far from scheming to get the lady into a lunatic asylum, her hosts were extraordinarily sympathetic, and even when they were by themselves the worst thing they said was:

‘Very urgent. Deliver at once.’

Men have a perfect passion for being exactly like other men—not merely in clothes, but in everything.

So much so that they cannot bear to think that there are men unlike themselves.

Perhaps the principal proof is that the very man who grumbles at fashionableness in women would be the first to complain if his wife started to ignore fashion and to dress merely for comfort, utility, and charm.

No man objects to the inexpensiveness of his wife’s clothes, but every man objects to them looking inexpensive.

The advertised lure of a blouse marked one pound at a sale is that it has the air of a blouse costing two pounds.

You cannot hurry nature. It is a great truth that the present is firmly rooted in the past. It refuses to be pulled up by the roots. Futile to announce that you will in future be guided by nothing but common sense! Whose common sense?

Common sense is a purely relative thing.

The common sense of the past often seems silly to us, and the common sense of the present will often seem silly to the future. The progress of mankind is an extraordinarily complex business. It cannot be settled in a phrase.