Self-respect is the very cement of character, without which character will not form nor stand a personal ideal is the only possible foundation for self-respect, without which self-respect degenerates into vanity or conceit, or is lost entirely, its place being taken by worthlessness and the consciousness of worthlessness and that is the end of all character. It is often said that if we do not respect ourselves no one else will respect us this is rather a dangerous way to put it let us rather say that if we are not worthy of our own respect we cannot claim the respect of others. True self-respect is a matter of being and never of mere seeming. As Paulsen says, 'It is vanity that desires first of all to be seen and admired, and then, if possible, really to be something whereas proper self esteem desires first of all to be something, and' then, if possible, to have its worth recognized.'
More Quotes from Edward O. Sisson:
Abraham Lincoln tells somewhere that as a boy when he met an obscure or ambiguous sentence in his reading it threw him into a sort of rage. The fact is that this was simply a form of instinct for clear thinking which is found in every child and manifests.Edward O. Sisson
The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it established by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his father's will when that stimulus is absent, the reaction as a matter of course does not occur.
Edward O. Sisson
This sense of honor is the sense of right. It is the soul's instinctive love for the good, the true, the commendable, and its instinctive scorn of the base, mean, and vile. There is a confusion between that false honor which cares only what another thinks.
Edward O. Sisson
Every man whose tastes have been allowed to develop in wrong directions, or in whom the best tastes have failed of higher perfection, loses thereby from the inner joy and outer value of his whole life. Every good taste is a source and guarantee of happy healthy hours and days, and thus of the enrichment and elevation of life. A reasonable capacity to appreciate music and art quite suffices to enrich life and exercise a wholesome influence upon character. The taste for good reading is inseparable from a taste for good thinking.
Edward O. Sisson
In one sense the whole process of development consists of the formation of habits for knowledge itself, and the powers of thought, as well as the higher elements in the will, all depend upon the establishment of fixed ways of reacting to given stimuli. Consequently, the general laws of habituation underlie the whole of education. But the term habit is more commonly restricted to those established reactions that act with little or no participation of consciousness, or, in other words, mechanically or automatically. Such habits as these begin to form very early, and constitute a kind of supporting framework for the higher elements of character.
Edward O. Sisson
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Based on Topics: Characters Quotes, Conceits Quotes, Danger & Risk Quotes, Ideal Quotes, Respect Quotes, Self Quotes, Self-respect QuotesBased on Keywords: cement, degenerates, paulsen, worthlessness
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