You have sometimes heard it said of people that “they have to be handled like eggs”; eggs must be handled carefully, or you are likely to break them. Some people are super-sensitive: you have to be very careful what you do or say, or they will be hurt or offended; you can never be sure how they are going to take anything. Such people are much of the time suffering from wounded feelings, are displeased and offended. It is true that some are of a highly nervous temperament and naturally feel things more keenly than others, but it is not this natural nervous sensitiveness that leads to the results above mentioned, it is a morbid and unnatural state into which people allow themselves to enter. The natural feelings may need restraint and careful cultivation, but these morbid feelings need to be got rid of. Sometimes people can bear to hear others ridiculed or talked about in a gossiping way, or see them slighted, and think nothing of it or even be amused; but when they themselves become the target for such things, it almost kills them, or at least they feel almost killed. What makes this great difference in their feelings? Why do they feel for themselves so much more than they do for others? Trace the feeling back to its origin, and you will find that their self-love is the thing that has been hurt. If they loved others as they love themselves, they would feel just as much hurt by that which was directed against the other as by that which was directed at themselves. It is self-love that makes people easily offended and easily wounded; and the more self-love they have, the easier they are hurt and the quicker their resentment is aroused. Self-love begets vanity; it quivers in keenest anguish at a sneer or a scornful smile; it is distressed by even a fancied slight. Self-love throws the nerves of sensation all out to the surface and makes them hyper-sensitive, and so the person feels everything keenly. He is constantly smarting under a sense of injustice. He feels he is constantly being mistreated. Oh, this self-love! How many pains it brings! how many slights it sees! how often it is offended! Reader, are you a victim of self-love? If you are so sensitive, always being wounded and offended, self-love is what is the trouble. If you will get rid of this self-love, you will be rid of that morbid sensitiveness; that is, you will get rid of that morbid sensitiveness that makes people have to be so careful with you.