Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
The world is a system where everyone has a role; stepping aside risks losing your place.
In plain terms
Everyone has a place; leaving it is risky.
What can you take from it?
Stay in your role to avoid losing your place.

Where it applies

  • career change
  • social norms
  • identity crisis

Putting it to work

  • maintain role
  • stay connected
  • find your place

Questions to consider

  • What is your place?
  • Is safety worth staying?

Another view

Leaving a role might lead to a better one.

More from Nathaniel Hawthorne

  1. Long, long may it be, ere he comes again! His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invader's step …

    Permalink to quote #2
  2. By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places - whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest - where crime has been…

    Permalink to quote #3
  3. In old times, the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the northern Indians, coming down upon them from this mountain rampart, through some defile k…

    Permalink to quote #4

Related quotes

  1. How can you live in the Northeast? How can you live in the South? How can you build on the banks of a river when the flood water pours from the mouth? How can …

    Paul SimonPaul Simon quote #44
  2. Let every man honor and love the land of his birth and the race from which he springs and keep their memory green. It is a pious and honorable duty. But let us…

    Henry Cabot LodgeHenry Cabot Lodge quote #1
  3. Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. The they, which supplies the answer to the who of everyday Da-sein, is the nobody to whom every Da-sein has alway…

    Martin HeideggerMartin Heidegger quote #1