You Learn By Living

To respect one’s fellow men is perhaps more difficult than to “love” them in a wide, vague sense. In fact, it is possible that to feel respect for mankind is better than to feel love for it. Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person’s stature is as large as one’s own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.

I think everyone, from the earliest possible age, should be taught not to be sorry for himself; not, whatever the provocation, whatever the temptation, to carry his depression or his disappointments or his black moods to someone else.

Maturity also means that you have set your values, that you know what you really want out of life

If no one else is conscious of a failing we have, a great many of us are apt to hide it instead of trying to eliminate it. We are glossing over something instead of honestly trying to get rid of it. Saying to yourself, “Well, after all, nobody knows,” is no solution. Because you know.

But if you feel that the criticism is made out of sheer malice and that no amount of explanation will change a point of view which has nothing to do with the facts, then the best thing is to put it out of your mind entirely, as though it did not touch you or your loved ones in any way.
For some people this is hard to do. In fact, I know some for whom it is impossible. But I find that you can close the door and turn to other things, knowing that nothing can be achieved by giving any further attention to it.

when you understand yourself clearly it is easier for you to understand more clearly the people whom you love.

There is another ingredient of the maturing process that is almost as painful as accepting your own limitations and the knowledge of what you are unable to give. That is learning to accept what other people are unable to give you. You must learn not to demand the impossible or to be upset when you do not get it.

Life teaches you that you cannot attain real maturity until you are ready to accept this harsh knowledge, this limitation in yourself, and make the difficult adjustment. Either you must learn to allow someone else to meet the need, without bitterness or envy, and accept it; or somehow you must make yourself learn to meet it. If you refuse to accept the limitation in yourself, you will be unable to grow beyond this point.

I think everyone, at some time in his life, has this happen to him, comes face to face with the bitter realization that he has failed in something that means a tremendous amount and probably in a relation that is close to him.

It is curious that many people seem to fear self-knowledge because they assume, and often quite wrongly, that it implies discovering only derogatory things about oneself. Actually, an important part of self-knowledge is that it gives one a better realization of the inner strength that can be called upon, of which one may be quite unaware.
Because it is easier to say, “I can’t,” than “I can,” or at least “I can try,” many people go through life unaware of untapped strength, even untapped ability. They haven’t explored their own capabilities. They really don’t know where their strength lies.