The Folly of Self-Boasting
If a ship could make its own wind and blow itself across the ocean, it might seem a very great thing; but it cannot. And no more can a man get behind himself and blow himself up to reputation; and yet it is a thing the folly of which a man does not often perceive, and into which men very naturally and easily fall. It is a sort of bidding one's self up in the market. It is a vain estimate of one's self. It indicates that one has an exceedingly low standard by which he measures himself. There is not one of us that cannot boast that he is better than somebody else, if he takes his own idea of somebody else far down below himself; but there are always people who are above us, and there are standards and ideals above them; and it is an honest and manly thing to compare yourself upward and not downward, and so to be in the consciousness that whatever you are by the grace of God you are not anywhere near your ideal, or your own standard of excellence. Boasting indicates the want of any high self-measuring, and it is very foolish and idle.—Sel.