Man must act in such a way that the whole of his individuality lies in each moment.

What ought a man to be? Well, my short answer is ‘himself’.

A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

A man is what he wills himself to be.

To understand a man is really to be that man.

Man is what he wills himself to be.

A man must comport himself as a man. He must fight always preferably and soundly with the odds in his favor but on necessity against any sort of odds and with no thought of the outcome. He should follow his tribal laws and customs insofar as he can and accept the tribal discipline when he cannot. But it is never a reproach that he has kept a child's heart, a child's honesty and a child's freshness and nobility.

Be that self that one is

He who would preserve the supremacy of natural feelings in social life knows not what he asks. Ever at war with himself, hesitating between his wishes and his duties, he will be neither a man nor a citizen. He will be of no use to himself nor to others. He will be a man of our day, a Frenchman, an Englishman, one of the great middle class. To be something, to be himself, and always at one with himself, a man must act as he speaks, must know what course he ought to take, and must follow that course with vigour and persistence. When I meet this miracle it will be time enough to decide whether he is a man or a citizen, or how he contrives to be both. Two conflicting types of educational systems spring from these conflicting aims. One is public and common to many, the other private and domestic.

One must be something in order to do something.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.

A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.

The true profession of a man is to find his way to himself.

To be a person, a being must be self-conscious, aware of its identity and its continued existence over time.