Daily Inspiration Quote by Charles Horton Cooley

Failure, in Cooley's hands, is less a private embarrassment than a social event with moral consequences. As a sociologist of the self-in-relation (the man behind the "looking-glass self"), Cooley understood that much of what we call confidence is scaffolded by status: competence recognized, approval mirrored back, identity stabilized by other people's regard. Failure kicks out that scaffold. It shrinks the fantasy of self-sufficiency and forces a recalibration: who are you when the audience withholds applause?

"Enlarges the spirit" is carefully chosen. Not "improves" or "fixes" but enlarges: the self becomes roomier, less brittle, more capable of holding contradiction. The subtext is quietly anti-heroic. Success can narrow you into a role you can afford to play; failure makes the role too expensive, so you return to the underlying person. That "fall back" is a kind of involuntary humility, but Cooley frames it as growth, not punishment.

The line about "humanity and God" reveals its era and its argument. In late 19th- and early 20th-century America, modernity was reorganizing authority: institutions, markets, and professional expertise were rising; older religious assurances were being renegotiated rather than erased. Cooley pairs the two anchors. "Humanity" suggests solidarity and social dependence; "God" suggests an ultimate reference point when the social mirror cracks. The intent isn't pious consolation so much as a reminder that the self is never a closed system. Failure widens the frame until you can see the web again.