earning self-respect

people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named corespondent. If they

Paradoxically, the people who trust themselves the most are usually the people who have betrayed themselves the most profoundly, but then made the decision to walk themselves home—inch by inch—to their authentic selves.

People who trust themselves trust themselves because they’re honest with themselves. More specifically, they’re honest about what they need to restrict themselves from or altogether avoid. We think that the more we trust ourselves, the fewer boundaries we’ll need; the opposite is true. The people who trust themselves the most are the ones who honor

No matter how great the list of product recommendations in your favorite nootropics or skincare subreddit, the practices and the moral premises of a subculture always are deferred when put in company hands. Deferred in the way that buying the hottest running shoes don’t mean you’re fit. Deferred in the way that buying books from Verso isn’t an adeq

The technique of merging rests upon the rock of gentleness. When we are gentle towards others, it does not mean that we allow them to walk all over us. It simply means that when we decide to take a stand in anything, we do so with respect towards others. By adding a soft touch to our daily doings, we create curves where there are hard edges and we

“Each man had only one genuine vocation — to find the way to himself…. His task was to discover his own destiny — not an arbitrary one — and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness