Avoiding shame

"Favour and disgrace are as one's fear. Dignity and disaster as one's person. What I mean to say of favour and disgrace is this: - Disgrace is the lower place, which he who wins and he who loses equally fear; so that (in the struggle for place) favour and disgrace are (only important) in proportion to one's fear (of failure). And what I mean by dignity and disaster being as one's person is this: - What renders me liable to great disaster is my person; so that if I had no person (body, personal importance), what disaster could I have? So then, if, for the sake of dignity, one seeks to make himself ruler of the world, he may be permitted, indeed, to rule it temporarily; but if, for love, one seeks to make himself ruler of the world, he may be entrusted with it (for ever, or he may trust himself to the world for ever)."