Keeping score of old scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always makes you less than you are.
Interpretation
Holding onto past grievances diminishes your worth and prevents personal growth.
This quote highlights the detrimental effects of harboring grudges and seeking revenge. It suggests that continually measuring one's worth against past conflicts or comparing oneself to others leads to a lesser version of oneself, inhibiting personal development and emotional well-being.
In practice
During a discussion on personal growth, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of letting go of past grievances.
Over the years, I've evolved a somewhat heretical but time-and mind-saving approach to books, articles, editorials that deal with weighty matters. More often than not, by beginning at the end and contemplating the conclusions, one can determine if it's worth going through the whole to get there.
Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely like exercising authority usually lose it.
To live long and achieve happiness, cultivate the art of radiating happiness.
The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
If you never budge, don't expect a push.
It's never a good deal when only one party thinks it is.
He who is his own guide is guided by a fool.
I couldn't see passion as a bad thing.
Avoid a sugared gospel as you would shun sugar of lead. Seek the gospel which rips up and tears and cuts and wounds and hacks and even kills, for that is the gospel that makes alive again. And when you have found it, give good heed to it. Let it enter into your inmost being. As the rain soaks into the ground, so pray the Lord to let his gospel soak into your soul.
Sometimes the heart is so heavy that we turn away from it and forget that its throbbing is the wisest message of life, a wordless message that says, "Live, be, move, rejoice -- you are alive!" Without the heart's wise rhythm, we could not exist.
Take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
The next time you feel unworthy, inadequate or inferior, remember that these experiences have nothing to do with humbleness, any more than lowering yourself to connect with another individual has to do with humbleness. There are no lower or higher individuals in the perception of a humble person. There are only souls. There is only love.
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