Echoes

If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.

When you are content to be simply yourself, everybody will respect you.

Whoever gives reverence receives reverence.

I exist as I am, that is enough.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

It would be better for me that the whole world should disagree with me than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.

Though the whole world should praise him, he would not be stimulated to greater endeavour, and though the whole world should condemn him, he would not be depressed. So fixed was he in the difference between the internal judgement of himself and the external judgement of others.

Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

It is better to be alone than in bad company.

If anything is sacred the human body is sacred.

You should rather please yourself than the people; take thought for the quality, not the number, of judgements made about you.

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation.

I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.

When one cultivates to the utmost the principles of his nature, and exercises them on the principle of reciprocity, he is not far from the path. What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others.

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

If the public thought elevates you above the generality of men, let the other humble you, and hold you in a perfect equality with all mankind, for this is your natural condition.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

He who does not value life does not deserve it.