Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Relying on the failures or faults of others for emotional stability creates a fragile and unhealthy foundation.
- In plain terms
- Do not base your happiness on other people's weaknesses.
- What can you take from it?
- Build emotional stability on self-reliance rather than others' flaws.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What should emotional life rest on?
- How do we validate ourselves?
Another view
Human relationships often involve interdependence that makes complete self-reliance impossible.
More from George Santayana
Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.
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Permalink to quote #57 Love makes us poets and the approach of death makes us philosophers.
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