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.

A man’s self-respect is curiously involved with his ability to force a community to disburse certain sums of money for his maintenance and diversion. I have done thirty years of journalism, including jam-labels and inducements to use hair-restorers, and my conscience is undisturbed.

It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak. [...] To say that one persons desires and feelings are stronger and more various than those of another, is merely to say that he has more of the raw material of human nature, and is therefore capable, perhaps of more evil, but certainly of more good.

To remain virtuous, a man has only to combat his own desires: a woman must resist her own inclinations, and the continual attack of man.

While it is true as a fact affirmed by constant observation that men have stronger passions than women, in general and that many men demand of their wives a degree of sexual indulgence which is the cause of serious injury to them, and even impossible for them to grant without doing themselves the greatest wrong, it is by no means proven either that these demands are imperative, that they are natural, or that they are not injurious to the man as well as the woman, much less beneficial to either. On the contrary, there is a great a weight of evidence as could be required that restraint, self-control, and moderation in the exercise of the sexual instinct is in the highest degree beneficial to man, as well as to woman, and necessary for his highest development.

"I have never met a truly strong person who didn't have self-respect. I think a lot of inwardly and outwardly directed contempt passes itself off as self-respect: the idea of raising yourself by stepping on someone's shoulders instead of doing it yourself. When I see guys working out for cosmetic reasons, I see vanity exposing them in the worst way, as cartoon characters, billboards for imbalance and insecurity. Strength reveals itself through character. - "The Iron

I asked her if affection was not also a strong means of enduring human life. I said that men fear affection because it is stronger than power and one must only have brute force to wield power but must have strength deeper than flesh to wield affection. For with affection comes great sorrow, the sorrow of inevitable death, but also with affection comes joy and peace that power can never give.

There are men who could neither be distressed nor won into a sacrifice of their duty; but this stern virtue is the growth of few soils; and in the main it will be found that a power over a man's support is a power over his will. If it were necessary to confirm so plain a truth by facts, examples would not be wanting, even in this country, of the intimidation or seduction of the Executive by the terrors or allurements of the pecuniary arrangements of the legislative body.

Why should a Man be Moral? Because this strengthens his will.

Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named co-respondent. In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues.

To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.

To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are pecularily in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out - since our self-image is untenable - their false notions of us...