He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Beware of allowing a tactless word, a rebuttal, a rejection to obliterate the whole sky.

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.

Some men, like spaniels, will only fawn the more when repulsed, but will pay little heed to a friendly caress.

Only individuals with an aberrant temperament can in the long run retain their self-esteem in the face of the disesteem of their fellows.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

I'm still the same person who grew up mostly in a Midwestern, factory-working neighborhood where talk about self-esteem would have seemed like a luxury.

Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.

So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.

All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude-and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep.

If we must live with a perpetual sense that the world and the men in it are greater than we and too much for us, let it be the measure of our virtue that we know this and seek no comfort.

Oft times nothing profits more Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right Well-managed.

It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.

Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may, we only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.

Respect yourself if you would have others respect you.

Be a friend to thyself, and others will be so too.

So there was not an I anymore-not a basis on which I could organize my self-respect-save my limitless capacity for toil that it seemed I possessed no more.

It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

I began to understand that self-esteem isn't everything; it's just that there's nothing without it.