Self-respect: Its Source, Its Power

We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait

To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent.

Nonetheless, character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.

Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the spectre of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that one's sanity becomes an object of speculation among one's acquaintances. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us ... See more

innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.