Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. SayersRead
Those who make some other person their job... are dangerous.
Interpretation
Relying too heavily on others for purpose can lead to harm.
This quote reflects the importance of personal responsibility and the dangers of becoming overly dependent on others for one's sense of identity or purpose. When individuals make others their main focus, they risk losing their own autonomy and becoming harmful to themselves and those around them, as it can lead to toxic relationships and a lack of personal fulfillment.
In practice
In a motivational speech about self-empowerment.
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
But suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, "suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?" "You can usually tell," said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes fundamental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is.
. . . the fellow's got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God's a secretion of the liver--all right once in a way, but there's no need to keep on about it. There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.
You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched.
None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.
What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.
Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.
Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.
Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.
The life function of [the local church] is to love the God who created it - to care for others out of obedience to Christ, to heal those who hurt, to take away fear, to restore community, to belong to one another, to proclaim the Good News while living it out. The church is the invisible made visible.
Finding is losing something else. I think about, perhaps even mourn, what I lost to find this
Life is an aspiration. Its mission is to strive after perfection, which is self-realization. The ideal must not be lowered because of our weaknesses or imperfections.
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