Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated.
Interpretation
Negative habits can have a lasting detrimental effect on a person's potential.
This quote suggests that when a person invests significant time in developing bad habits, it can lead to a decline in their personal growth and potential. The metaphor of being 'diminished' implies that the better aspects of their character and abilities can fade away, resulting in a loss of what they could have achieved in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal development, you might quote this to emphasize the importance of cultivating good habits.
Part of the reason there's an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you're in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let's say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.
I don't tell people, 'You're okay the way that you are.' That's not the right story. The right story is, 'You're way less than you could be.'
If you learn a martial art, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously, you learn to control it.
Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.
Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.
I'm interested in what motivates individuals to participate in atrocious acts to support their ideological identification.
If we could be twice young and twice old we could correct all our mistakes.
You don't have to turn this into something. It doesn't have to upset you. Things can't shape our decisions by themselves.
He who acts, spoils; he who grasps, lets slip.
While I am in this world, I am resolved that no vexation shall put me out of temper if I can possibly command myself. Even old age, which is making strides towards me, shall not prevail to make me peevish.
Health is the first benefit. Content is the first fortune. Friendliness is the first kindness. Nirvana is the first happiness.
I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.
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