
“Self-esteem isn't everything; it's just that there's nothing without it.”
Sur quelque préférence une estime se fonde,
Et c'est n'estimer rien qu'estimer tout le monde.
Act I, sc. i
Le Misanthrope (1666)
Sur quelque préférence une estime se fonde, Et c'est n'estimer rien qu'estimer tout le monde.
The Misanthrope
Variant: Sur quelque préférence une estime se fonde,
Et c'est n'estimer rien qu'estimer tout le monde.
“Self-esteem isn't everything; it's just that there's nothing without it.”
“Everything that man esteems
Endures a moment or a day.”
II, st. 2
The Tower (1928), Two Songs From a Play http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1741/
Context: Everything that man esteems
Endures a moment or a day.
Love’s pleasure drives his love away,
The painter’s brush consumes his dreams.
“Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.”
"Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir" (1978) by Martha Gellhorn.
Source: Travels With Myself and Another
“In life, nothing will increase your self-esteem as much as make it on your own.”
Original: Nella vita, nulla aumenterà la vostra autostima tanto quanto farcela da soli.
Source: prevale.net
As quoted in Rolling Stone (1992-04-16).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print
Context: All drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with your self-esteem. They’re no good at all. But I’m not going to go around preaching against [them].
comments by singer Naomi Judd, Hallmark Channel (January 29, 2006)
2007, 2008
Boston Massacre Oration (1774)
Context: Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves. Remember, my friends, from whom you sprang. Let not a meanness of spirit, unknown to those whom you boast of as your fathers, excite a thought to the dishonor of your mothers I conjure you, by all that is dear, by all that is honorable, by all that is sacred, not only that ye pray, but that ye act; that, if necessary, ye fight, and even die, for the prosperity of our Jerusalem. Break in sunder, with noble disdain, the bonds with which the Philistines have bound you. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed, by the soft arts of luxury and effeminacy, into the pit digged for your destruction. Despise the glare of wealth. That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue.
1840s, Letter to William Lloyd Garrison (1846)
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 396.