quote · Legacy record
Life for both sexes--and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement--is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority-- it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney-- for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination-- over other people.
Life for both sexes--and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement--is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority-- it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney-- for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination-- over other people.
Approximate author period: c. 1911 AD · modern
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- Virginia Woolf
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1911 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1882 to 1941; Wikidata Q40909, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40909 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 188335; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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