“The most difficult secret for a man to keep is his own opinion of himself.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The most difficult secret for a man to keep is his own opinion of himself." by Marcel Pagnol?
Marcel Pagnol photo
Marcel Pagnol 9
novelist, playwright and filmmaker from France 1895–1974

Related quotes

Mandell Creighton photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Martin Buber photo

“In the ice of solitude man becomes most inexorably a question to himself, and just because the question pitilessly summons and draws into play his most secret life he becomes an experience to himself.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

Source: Between Man and Man (1965), p. 150

Marcus Aurelius photo
Thomas Paine photo
E. W. Howe photo

“The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

Country Town Sayings (1911), p9.

Bernard Baruch photo

“Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.”

Bernard Baruch (1870–1965) American businessman

Deming Headlight (New Mexico), 6 January 1950, as cited in the Yale Book of Modern Proverbs and at There Are Opinions, And Then There Are Facts; Freakonomics blog post by Fred R. Shapiro http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/08/18/there-are-opinions-and-then-there-are-facts/ (18 August 2011)

Erich Fromm photo

“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 4 "Problems of Humanistic Ethics"

Mark Twain photo
W.B. Yeats photo

“Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1723/
Responsibilities (1914)
Context: Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.

Related topics