Lessons in Life; A Series of Familiar EssaysHolland, J. G. (Josiah Gilbert)
Philosophy
Lessons in Life; A Series of Familiar Essays
Holland, J. G. (Josiah Gilbert)
Conduct of life
A thoroughly self-respectful person will command respect anywhere.
A man who carries into the world an unsuspecting, unassuming face,
who is polite to everybody, minds his own business, and does not
show by his demeanor that he bears about with him a sense of
degradation and inferiority, and who gives evidence that he
considers himself a man, and expects the treatment due to a man,
will secure politeness and respect from every true gentleman and
gentlewoman in the world. The man who shies, and suspects, and
envies, and is full of petty jealousies, and is always afraid that
he shall not get all that is due to him in the way of polite
attention, and manifests a feeling of great uncertainty and
anxiety concerning his own social position, is sure to be shunned
at last, and he will well deserve his fate. No real gentleman, and
no true gentlewoman, ever has feelings like these. It is only
those who are neither, and who do not deserve the position of
either, that are troubled in this way. I give it as a deliberate
judgment that there is far less of contempt for the poor and
obscure among what are denominated the higher classes of society
than there is of envy and hatred of the rich and renowned among
the poor and humble; and that the principal bar to a more cordial
and gentle intercourse between the two classes, is the lack of
self-respect which pervades the latter, and the mean, degrading
humility which they manifest in all their relations with those
whom they consider above their level.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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