Sometimes you had to take a look at yourself and then look away.
Interpretation
Self-reflection can be challenging, and at times, it's necessary to take a step back for our own well-being.
This quote suggests the importance of self-reflection in understanding oneself, but also acknowledges that there are moments when the truth can be uncomfortable or overwhelming. Taking a moment to step away allows a person to process feelings and recover from self-examination, promoting mental health and self-acceptance.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one might say, 'Sometimes you had to take a look at yourself and then look away.'
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty
The only way the past can drag you back is if you choose to bring it with you into the present.
The course of our lives is determined by how we react--what we decide and what we do--at the darkest of times. The nature of that response determines a person's true worth and greatness.
By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream
Never," said my aunt, "be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.
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