"If you have to keep reminding yourself of a thing, perhaps it isn't so"
About this Quote
Self-suggestion is a flimsy kind of faith. Morley’s line needles the modern habit of chanting mantras at ourselves: I’m happy, I’m over it, this matters, this doesn’t. If a belief needs constant verbal maintenance, he implies, it’s already leaking. The punch is in “keep reminding yourself” - not reminding others, not being challenged by reality, but privately rehearsing a claim until it feels true. That’s less conviction than anxiety management.
Morley wrote in an era when self-improvement rhetoric was becoming a mass-market product, with the early 20th century’s faith in “positive thinking” and the cultural rise of the brisk, self-made American personality. Against that backdrop, the sentence reads like a dry corrective from a literary humanist: character isn’t something you can wallpaper over with slogans. If you have to tell yourself you’re brave before every room you enter, maybe you’re scared. If you have to repeat that a relationship is fine, maybe you’re negotiating with dread. The quote doesn’t romanticize authenticity; it’s suspicious of performative certainty, especially when the performance is for an audience of one.
The subtext is almost diagnostic: repetition is a clue. Morley’s “perhaps” keeps it from turning into a scold, leaving room for genuine practice and discipline, but the barb remains. The line works because it treats our inner monologue as evidence, not truth - and it invites the uncomfortable question: what would I believe if I stopped propping it up?
Morley wrote in an era when self-improvement rhetoric was becoming a mass-market product, with the early 20th century’s faith in “positive thinking” and the cultural rise of the brisk, self-made American personality. Against that backdrop, the sentence reads like a dry corrective from a literary humanist: character isn’t something you can wallpaper over with slogans. If you have to tell yourself you’re brave before every room you enter, maybe you’re scared. If you have to repeat that a relationship is fine, maybe you’re negotiating with dread. The quote doesn’t romanticize authenticity; it’s suspicious of performative certainty, especially when the performance is for an audience of one.
The subtext is almost diagnostic: repetition is a clue. Morley’s “perhaps” keeps it from turning into a scold, leaving room for genuine practice and discipline, but the barb remains. The line works because it treats our inner monologue as evidence, not truth - and it invites the uncomfortable question: what would I believe if I stopped propping it up?
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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