Self-depreciation

“ Perhaps they may be dwarfed and enfeebled by years of morbid thought; but if you persist in a self-respecting and self-reliant and God-trusting course of thinking your powers will increase and your capabilities strengthen.
It is no easy matter to overcome a habit of self-depreciation. ”

“ This contradiction in the human mind, this inordinate pride of men in combination with ignorance of their own true value, this insatiable self-seeking in connection with so contemptible a depreciation of themselves, is so common that we are only astonished that thoughtful persons, perceiving it in others, are not thereby led to discover it in themselves.... Every man has a price at which he sells himself. ”

“ But he reaches his high estate by either of these roads only when he reads or travels to enrich himself in order to give out what he gets to enrich the lives of others. He owes it to himself to get his own refreshment, his own pleasure, but he need not make that pure self-indulgence. ”

“ Yet I am quite sure in that case that your value as a human being would have been immeasurably less. I think I have seen in you the elements of passions, which luxury and idleness and the too early possession of irresponsible power, might have developed with fatal results. You have simply to reflect whether you would rather be an energetic, intelligent, self-controlled man, capable of guiding the affairs of life and of acquiring its prizes,—or to be the reverse of all this, with its prizes bought for you by the wealth of parents. ”

“ In so laboriously seeking others’ good, it might be said that he found his own—not wealth, for his generosity seriously impaired his private fortune, but happiness, and self-satisfaction, and the peace that passes knowledge. ”

“ But I stick to this, shall stick to it until I have made enough to invest and give me an independent income; no matter how much I may long to be lazy or frivolous, to dance, to flirt week in and out at house parties—partly because I now enjoy that supreme form of egoism known as self-respect, partly because the spirit of the times, the great world-tides urge me on, partly because, when all is said and done, work fills up your time more satisfactorily than anything else. ”

“ If you are not doing good with what little you have, depend upon it the more money you got the more selfish you would become, and all the good you appeared to do with your money, if you attempted to do any, would be so much insinuating self-laudation. ”

“ Because your money, your millions, have changed you from a man into a monster. This wealth has injured us all—yes, even mother, noble though she is. But you—it has made you a fiend. Well, I wished to be independent of you. You have brought me up so that I could not live without luxury. But you haven’t destroyed in me the last spark of self-respect. And I decided to make a play for a fortune of my own. ”

“ When I find that such and so various are the tastes of men, I am a little puzzled to know what is meant by self-interest, of which some persons talk so fluently, as if it was a Jack-in-a-Box which they could take out and show you, and which they tell you is the object that all men equally aim at. If money, is it for its own sake or the sake of other things? Is it to hoard it or to spend it, on ourselves or others? In all these points, we find the utmost diversity and contradiction both of feeling and practice. ”

“ Even though he were in part right, and a tinge of self-esteem or love of applause crept into the Man's benefactions, they remain benefactions no less, costing him as much money, and reaching the same goals. ”

“ To appreciate warmly, even enthusiastically, is generally the proof of a kind and sunny disposition; to depreciate is to be in yourself but a sad soul at best! For depreciation in one thing leads to depreciation in another ”

“ If your real desire is to do good, there is no need to wait for money before you do it; you can do it now, this very moment, and just where you are. If you are really so unselfish as you believe yourself to be, you will show it by sacrificing yourself for others now.
No matter how poor you are, there is room for self-sacrifice, for did not the widow put her all into the treasury? ”

“ If the millionaire has died with a thousand selfish sores in his mind,—if his life's privileges have been wasted in high feeding and self-indulgence,—if he has thought only of himself, his riches, his pride, his position, or his particular form of respectability, he will get the full result of that mental attitude! ”

“ Hence the lesson of self-denial—the sacrificing of a present gratification for a future good—is one of the last that is learnt. Those classes which work the hardest might naturally be expected to value the most the money which they earn. ”

“ Nearly everyone has some cause for self-gratification—some little revenue of happiness that makes him resigned to all ordinary conditions of life.
My two companions wished to acquire a certain sum of money, for a certain purpose. They had every reason to believe their wishes would be fulfilled; and were contented in their toil. ”

“ It is this that causes persons so wise in appearance, so regular, so circumspect, who have lived with so much honour, and have been proposed as the model of those who are called wealthy in the world — viri divitiarum, and who, from appearances, ought to be loaded with spiritual riches, to find themselves at death with their hands empty of good works. This self-love, this little ambition, this secret pride, have robbed them of all, and corrupted everything. ”

“ Will you go to the millionaire who has built up his vast fortune by the ruin of hundreds of families, and speak to him of the beauty of self-sacrifice and the splendour of self-surrender? The answer of people of the selfish type is: Why should I sacrifice myself for the future? ”

“ one’s self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find depreciated. ”

“ Thirdly, To the pleasure and advantage, which he himself reaps from his possessions, and which produce an agreeable sympathy in us. Whether we ascribe our esteem of the rich and great to one or all of these causes, we may clearly see the traces of those principles, which give rise to the sense of vice and virtue. I believe most people, at first sight, will be inclined to ascribe our esteem of the rich to self-interest, and the prospect of advantage. ”

“ And so we go on getting hundreds of things that we don't need, that have no real value except that they soothe our self-love,—and for these inferior articles we pay a higher proportion of our income than our rich neighbor does for his better ones. ”

“ My friends, we who have to earn our bread and to take honest money for honest work, know well enough what trouble we have to keep out of our daily life that mean, base spirit of self-interest, rather than of duty, which never asks of anything, ‘Is it right?’ but only ‘Will it pay me?’—which, instead of thinking, How can I do this work as well as possible? is perpetually thinking, How can I get most money for the least work? ”

“ So, again, the young man finds himself tempted to deceive or take advantage of his neighbor, in buying or selling, or other business transaction; for such inclination is the natural offspring of Self-love in the heart, which urges man to wealth, and disposes him to gain it at any cost, even at the expense of his fellow-man and of truth. ”

“ You are perpetually obliged to deny yourself in matters of taste, of self-improvement, of charity. You cannot procure the books, the paintings, you wish for—the instruction which you so earnestly desire, and would so probably profit by. Above all, your eyes are pained by the sight of distress you cannot relieve; and you are thus constantly compelled to control and subdue the kindest and warmest impulses of your generous nature. ”

“ A lifelong habit of calculating upon and taking advantage of the weaknesses, necessities, and mistakes of others, a pitiless insistence upon making the most of every advantage which one might gain over another, whether by skill or accident, the constant habit of undervaluing and depreciating what one would buy, and overvaluing what one would sell; finally, such a lifelong study to regulate every thought and act with sole reference to the pole star of self-interest in its narrowest conception as must needs presently render the man incapable of every generous or self-forgetting impulse. ”

“ The other of these two, namely, the excessive love of money, of property, which rules at the present day so great a part of mankind—springs from the same single root, self-love. Whether it take the form of avarice and meanness, or of fraud and knavery, or downright theft and robbery, it is but the same single principle in various garbs—Selfishness, and consequent indifference to the comfort and welfare of others, even to taking from them their last farthing, and leaving them to starve and die. ”

“ I remember really going so far as to wonder if any act of acquisition of the life-loving, life-searching sort that most appealed to me wouldn't mostly be fallacious if unaccompanied by that tag of the price paid in personal discomfort, in some self-exposure and some none too impossible consequent discomfiture, for the sake of it. ”

“ Turning again to ordinary duty, I know no precept more wide or more valuable than this: cultivate self-help; do not seek nor like to be dependent upon others for what you can yourself supply; and keep down as much as you can the standard of your wants, for in this lies a great secret of manliness, true wealth, and happiness; as, on the other hand, the multiplication of our wants makes us effeminate and slavish, as well as selfish. ”

“ A self-made man, indeed! then we owe no honor to such;
The genuine self-made man you cannot honor too much;
But be sure what you make is a man—with a heart, and a soul, and a mind,
Not merely a pile of dollars, that goes, leaving nothing behind. Labor. ”

“ Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. ”

“ But rather aim at self-perfection, make useful and unselfish service the object of your life, and ever reach out hands of faith towards the supreme and unalterable Good.
You say you desire wealth, not for your own sake, but in order to do good with it, and to bless others. If this is your real motive in desiring wealth, then wealth will come to you; for you are strong and unselfish indeed if, in the midst of riches, you are willing to look upon yourself as steward and not as owner. ”

“ The soul asks honour and not fame; to be upright, not to be successful; to be good, not prosperous; to be essentially, not outwardly, respectable. Does your soul ask profit? Does it ask money? Does it ask the approval of the indifferent herd? I believe not. For my own part, I want but little money, I hope; and I do not want to be decent at all, but to be good.
CHAPTER IV
We have spoken of that supreme self-dictation which keeps varying from hour to hour in its dictates with the variation of events and circumstances. ”

“ Are you a self-satisfied man of wealth, desiring to be gladdened by the sight of our need, to divert yourself in your idleness, and to mock at us? or are you that which does not and can not exist,—a man who pities us? ”

“ Life, I fancy, would very often be insupportable, but for the luxury of self-compassion; ”

“ But some excess in this direction is a small and a passing evil compared with recklessness and improvidence in the labouring classes, and a cheap price to pay for the inestimable worth of the virtue of self-dependence, as the general characteristic of a people: a virtue which is one of the first conditions of excellence in the human character—the stock on which if the other virtues are not grafted, they have seldom any firm root ”

“ Stop before cultivating a hoarding spirit, and remember that, logically, as between 41 the miser and the spendthrift, the latter has the best of the bargain. For, while the spendthrift has the selfish satisfaction of squandering his fortune in his own person, the miser is the dupe of his own self-denial, for the benefit of others who come after him. ”

“ Now, there is nothing wrong with using one's own talents to make a pleasant life for one's self; to acquire a nice home, and to have an abundant life, for we are meant to enjoy life. But this abundant and joyous life cannot come by taking from others what is not rightfully ours to take; but can only come by maintaining a fair exchange of each other's goods and services, and by leaving the element of greed out of all transactions. Thoughts that are greedy thoughts are our mortal enemy. ”

“ And when I, in self-defence, begged off as politely as possible, hints gentle or broad, according to the characters or feelings of those who came, touching the hardening and perverting influence of wealth, were thrown out for my especial edification.
And still the annoyance continues. Nobody but myself doubts the fact that I am worth from seventy to a hundred thousand dollars, and I am, therefore, considered allowable game for all who are too idle or prodigal to succeed in the world; or as Nature's almoner to all who are suffering from misfortunes. ”

“ What grandeur is there in loving oneself, sparing oneself, gaining profit for oneself? The true love of giving calls us away from all this, forcibly leads us to put up with loss, and foregoes its own interest, deriving its greatest pleasure from the mere act of doing good. ”

“ As you think so lightly of yourself,--as you do not dream of your wealth of charms, of the power that you possess to bless and enrich,--you cannot believe that you can bestow a treasure to the worth of which the wealth of the world is nothing. ”

“ It is requisite that there be an original propensity of some kind, in order to be a basis to self-love, by giving a relish to the objects of its pursuit; and none more fit for this purpose than benevolence or humanity. The goods of fortune are spent in one gratification or another: the miser who accumulates his annual income, and lends it out at interest, has really spent it in the gratification of his avarice. And it would be difficult to show why a man is more a loser by a generous action, than by any other method of expense ”