Great Throughts Treasury

"Never esteem anything as of advantage to thee that shall make thee break thy word or lose thy self-respect." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"Pride makes us esteem ourselves; vanity makes us desire the esteem of others." - Hugh Blair

"All true love is founded on esteem." - George Villiers 2nd Duke of Buckingham

"Every successful wickedness is, to say the least, a scandal... The only lesson to be derived from the successful misdeeds of the strong is to hold life here and now in no higher esteem than it deserves." -

"Many men and many women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not." -

"As friendship must be founded on mutual esteem, it cannot long exist among the vicious; for we soon find ill company to be like a dog, which dirts those the most whom he loves the best." - Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

"A person lacking internal feelings of self-worth feels a need for honor from others. The greater the lack of self-esteem, the greater the need for the validation of one’s self-worth through the approval of others." - Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

"Beauty may be the object of liking - great qualities of admiration - good ones of esteem - but love only is the object of love." - Henry Fielding

"My friends, how desperately do we need to be loved and to love. When Christ said that man does not live by bread alone, he spoke of a hunger. This hunger was no the hunger of the body. It was not the hunger for bread. He spoke of a hunger that begins deep down in the very depths of our being. He spoke of a need as vital as breath. He spoke of our hunger for love. Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love our self-esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world. We turn inward and begin to feed upon our own personalities, and little by little we destroy ourselves. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others." - Chief Dan George

"Esteem cannot be where there is no confidence, and there can be no confidence where there is no respect." - Henry Giles

"To be loved, we should merit but little esteem; all superiority attracts awe and aversion." - Claude-Adrien Helvétius

"Increasing your self-esteem is easy. You simply do good things, and remember that you did them." - John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL

"That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem." -

"Wisdom and virtue are by no means sufficient, without the supplemental laws of good-breeding, to secure freedom from degenerating into rudeness, or self-esteem from swelling into insolence. A thousand incivilities may be committed, and a thousand offices neglected, without any remorse of conscience or reproach from reason." -

"Injuries may be atoned for, and forgiven; but insults admit of no compensation. They degrade the mind in its own esteem, and force it to recover its level by revenge." -

"Esteem incites friendship, but not love; the former is the twin brother of Reverence; the latter is the child of Equality." -

"Esteem must be founded on some sort of preference. Bestow it on everybody and it ceases to have any meaning at all." - Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL

"We can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"We live in a narrow reality, partly conditioned by our form of perception and partly made by opinions that we have borrowed, to which our self-esteem is fastened. We fight for our opinions, not because we believe them but because they involve the ordinary feeling of oneself. Though we are continually being hurt owing to the narrowness of the reality in which we dwell, we blame life, and do not see the necessity of finding absolutely new standpoints. All ideas that have a transforming power change our sense of reality." - Maurice Nicoll

"The surest way to corrupt a young man is to teach him to esteem more highly those who think alike than those who think differently." -

"What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only which gives everything its value." - Thomas Paine

"Esteem thy soul highly, for a cage without a bird has no value." -

"Politeness is but kind feeling toward others, acted out in our intercourse with them. We are always polite to those we respect and esteem." - Johann Spurzheim, fully Johann Gaspar Spurzheim or Kaspar or Caspar

"Esteem all things that are good." - Tibullus, fully Albius Tibullus NULL

"Raised voices lower esteem. Hot tempers cool friendships. Loose tongues stretch truth. Swelled heads shrink influence. Sharp words dull respect." -

"Self-inspection - the best cure for self-esteem... By all means sometimes be alone; salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear; dare to look in thy chest, and tumble up and down what thou findest there." - William Wordsworth

"That the individual man should seek to know himself for what he really is and should esteem himself for his true worth make inevitable his desire to be known and esteemed by others according to his merits... God alone is the judge of one’s ultimate worth, and virtue is its own reward." -

"Praise is especially destructive to children, for they readily grasp the fact that praise is based on identification with their actions. Thus, they automatically blame themselves every time they make a mistake. This is the beginning of their lack of Self-Esteem." - L. S. Barksdale

"Pride makes us esteem ourselves; vanity to desire the esteem to others. It is just to say as Swift has done, that a proud man is too proud to be vain." -

"Pride defeats its own end, by bringing the man who seeks esteem and reverence into contempt." - Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England

"We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime." - Christian Nestell Bovee

"We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so." - John Christian Bovee

"All true love is grounded on esteem." - George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham

"I would rather be the author of one original thought than conqueror of a hundred battles. Yet moral excellence is so much superior to intellectual, that I ought to esteem one virtue more valuable than a hundred original thoughts." - William Benton Clulow

"Set the course of your life by the three stars - sincerity, courage and unselfishness. From these flow a host of other virtues. He who follows them will obtain the highest type of success, that which lies in the esteem of others." - Monroe E. Deutsch, fully Monroe Emanuel Deutsch

"No unity can last, in married life, unless the fellowship of hearts is accompanied by the fellowship of minds. As a woman loses the charms of her youth, her husband must perceive that her mind is developing and love must be perpetuated by esteem." - Félix Dupanloup, fully Félix Antoine Philibert Dupanloup

"Since modern man experiences himself both as the seller and as the commodity to be sold on the market, his self-esteem depends on conditions beyond his control. If he is "successful," he is valuable; if he is not "he is worthless."" -

"The strongest single factor in prosperity consciousness is self-esteem: believing you can do it, believing you deserve it, believing you will get it" - Jerry Gillies

"As love without esteem is volatile and capricious, esteem without love is languid and cold." -

"There is no wisdom in useless and hopeful sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved, nor will by me, at least, be thought worthy of esteem." -

"If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem." - Abraham Lincoln

"Our esteem is apt to be given where we know the least." - Jules Michelet

"It takes a lot of self-love and presumption to have such esteem for one’s own opinions that to establish them one must overthrow the public peace and introduce so many inevitable evils, and such a horrible corruption of morals, as civil wars and political changes bring with them in a matter of such weight - and introduce them into one’s own country." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"These are the times that try men's souls. The Summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its things; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial article as freedom should not be highly rated." - Thomas Paine

"Expect, but fear not, Death: Death cannot kill, till Time (that first must seal his patent) will. Would’st thou live long? keep Time in high esteem: whom gone, if thou canst not recall, redeem." - Francis Quarles

"It is difficult to like those whom we do not esteem; but it is no less so to like ourselves." -

"Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success." - George Augustus Sala, fully George Augustus Henry Sala

"In an active life is sown the seed of wisdom; but he who reflects not, never reaps; has no harvest from it, but carries the burden of age without the wages of experience; nor knows himself old, but from his infirmities, the parish register, and the contempt of mankind. And age if it is not esteem, has nothing." -

"All neurotic symptoms have as their object the task of safeguarding the patient’s self-esteem." -

"Never esteem anything as of advantage to thee that shall make thee break thy word or lose thy self-respect." -