The great secret is not having bad manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manners for all human souls.
-George Bernard Shaw
If you followed Shaw’s advice, what message would you be conveying to “human souls”? What kinds of people might not approve or be pleased? Why? Write about a situation in which someone is treating everyone the same way, only to have some people object.
I always perfer to believe the best of everybody-it saves to much trouble.
-Rudyard Kipling
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, can become great.
-Mark Twain
Those who believe in our ability do more than stimulate us. They create for us an atmosphere in which it becomes easier to succeed.
-John Lancaster Spalding
Aphorisms and Reflections
As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him [or her] down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise thought.
-Marion Anderson
Like carrying a grudge or hating someone, keeping another person down does you harm, too-sometimes more harm than you are doing to the other perosn. Who is kept dow in your school or community? Who is most determined to keep those people or groups down? Why? What can others do to stop the oppressors?
What “selfish” usually means is that a person or child isn’t doing what someone else would like.
-Kathleen Madden
Are you ever called “selfish” becuse someone wants you to go to a movie, play a game, or go out with friends when you are tired or have plans of your own? What is that person hoping will happen by calling you that? And why might you react in just that way? In what situations might it be fair for a friend or family member to call you selfish?
In flight between you and the world, back the world.
-Franz Kafka
I think it is not well for any of us to allow personality to submerge in any way our own.
-Olive Schreiner
What you dislike of yourself do not like for me.
-Spanish proverb
Look around you, or look into your own life. Do you see anyone ignoring or hiding his or her personality? It’s not uncommon for a person to sacrifice his or her individuality in favor of another person’s. Why do some people feel they need to do this? In what ways might other people react?
If you wish to know what a person is, place him in authority.
-Yugoslav proverb
One can no more judge a [person] by the actions of an hour than the climate of a country by the temperature of a day.
-J. Petit-Senn
These quotations are about two kinds of unpleasant people. You probably have at least one of each in your life. If you’re “lucky”, you know someone who could be described by both of these sayings.
One is not superior simply because one sees the world as odious.
-Chteaubriand
Those who imagine the world is against them have usually conspired to make it true.
-Sydney J. Harris