Daily Inspiration Quote by Benjamin Whichcote

Self-importance is framed here as a kind of spiritual malnutrition: the louder the ego, the hollower the person. Whichcote, a 17th-century Cambridge Platonist, writes in an England still vibrating from civil war, sectarian fury, and the uneasy restoration of authority. In that climate, “full of themselves” isn’t just a personal flaw; it’s a social danger. The zealot, the dogmatist, the self-appointed judge of others all share the same posture: certainty as a substitute for substance.

The line works because it weaponizes a neat inversion. “Full” should suggest abundance, wisdom, interior richness. Whichcote flips it into a punchline with moral teeth: ego isn’t content, it’s clutter. It crowds out the very qualities a philosopher-theologian would prize - reasoned humility, receptivity to truth, the capacity to be corrected. Emptiness here isn’t ignorance; it’s impermeability. A person “full of themselves” can’t take in anything new, can’t listen, can’t be taught. They are sealed.

There’s also a quiet social critique embedded in the aphorism. Self-regard often masquerades as piety or learning, especially in eras obsessed with orthodoxy and status. Whichcote’s target is the performative self: the public face inflated by reputation, faction, or moral posturing. The irony is surgical: the most self-satisfied characters broadcast fullness, but their inner life has been evacuated by the need to stay impressed with themselves.

It’s a rebuke dressed as a proverb, designed to travel farther than a sermon.