I began to understand that self-esteem isn't everything; it's just that there's nothing without it.

It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

So there was not an "I" anymore-not a basis on which I could organize my self-respect-save my limitless capacity for toil that it seemed I possessed no more.

Be a friend to thyself, and others will be so too.

Respect yourself if you would have others respect you.

Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may, we only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.

It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.

Oft times nothing profits more Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right Well-managed.

If we must live with a perpetual sense that the world and the men in it are greater than we and too much for us, let it be the measure of our virtue that we know this and seek no comfort.

All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude-and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep.