A Quote by John D. MacDonald
Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will.
Related Quotes
Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather.
You do not see clearly the evil in yourself, else you would hate yourself with all your soul. Like the lion who sprang at his image in the water, you are only hurting yourself, O foolish man. When you reach the bottom of the well of your own nature, then you will know that the vileness was from yourself.
Know the enemy, know yourself; your victory will never be endangered. Know the ground, know the weather; your victory will then be total.
And this has been man's stupidity - a very ancient one: whenever he gets into difficulty, he changes the word. Change the word marriage into soul mates, but don't change yourself. And you are the problem, not the word; any word will do. A rose is a rose is a rose...you can call it by any name. You are asking to change the concept, you are not asking to change yourself.
Your fellow man is your mirror. If your own face is clean, the image you perceive will also be flawless. But should you look upon your fellow man and see a blemish, it is your own imperfection that you are encountering - you are being shown what it is that you must correct within yourself.
The dying sun will glow on you without burning, as it has done today. The wind will be soft and mellow and your hilltop will tremble. As you reach the end of your dance you will look at the sun, for you will never see it again in waking or in dreaming, and then your death will point to the south. To the vastness.
But I never looked like that!’ - How do you know? What is the ‘you’ you might or might not look like? Where do you find it - by which morphological or expressive calibration? Where is your authentic body? You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens (I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you): even and especially for your own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of its images.
Get to know yourself. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all... Knowing yourself and knowing the facts, you can judge whether you can change the situation so it is more to your liking. If you cannot--or if you do not know how to improve on things--then discipline yourself to the adjustments that will be necessary.
The size of your accomplishments, the quality of your achievement, will depend very largely on how big a man you see in yourself, what sort of image you get of your possible self, yourself at your best.
When you look at yourself in a mirror, do you like what you see, or do you judge your body and use the word to tell yourself lies? If you believe that you are not attractive enough, then you believe a lie, and you are using the word against yourself, against the truth.
Dirt makes a man look masculine. Let your hair blow in the wind, and all that. It's OK. All you have to do is look neat when you have to look neat.
We can certainly see contemporary examples of people who radically change. As long you believe your spouse will never change and you keep telling yourself that, then you live with no hope. But if you understand that that's a myth, then you open up the door to hope.
First you will feel your inner transformation in your outer relationships, and then you will go deep. Then only will you begin to feel something inner. But we have a settled attitude about ourselves. We don't want to look into relationship at all, because then the naked face comes up.
When you do not know what to do, relax and tell yourself that other portions of yourself do know; they will take over. Give yourself some rest. Remind yourself that in many ways you are a very successful person as you are. Success does not necessarily involve great intellect or great position or great wealth; it has to do with inner integrity. Remember that.
Before you begin your journey toward integrity, you need to determine your starting point. In other words, what's your integrity quotient? How much integrity do you have? Do a moral inventory of yourself. Hold yourself accountable going forward for what you say and do. Moving toward a more faithful, fair, and honest life begins with confronting truthfully who you are. You can't hold yourself accountable if you won't see yourself clearly.
If you will stop all searching right now and tell the truth to yourself,
you will know what is known in the core of your bones.
You will know it with no image of it, no concept of it, no thought of it.
You will know it as that which has eternally been here.
And you will know it as yourself.
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