A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness.
Interpretation
People who are unwilling to share often lack their own resources or richness in life. Being miserly reflects deeper personal emptiness.
This quote by Eric Hoffer suggests that those who hesitate or refuse to share their resources or experiences with others tend to possess little themselves. It implies that a reluctance to give may stem from an impoverished inner life, where miserly behavior serves as an outward indication of emotional or spiritual scarcity.
In practice
During a seminar on personal growth, this quote could be used to emphasize the importance of generosity in achieving fulfillment.
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.
Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten unicorns, but not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else β what do they look to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here.
Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize.
Possibly, more people kill themselves and others out of hurt vanity than out of envy, jealousy, malice or desire for revenge.
The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.