Life & Wisdom Quote by Elbert Hubbard

A century before “energy” became social-media slang, Elbert Hubbard is sketching the original feedback loop: your posture toward people doesn’t stay inside you. It leaks into tone, timing, attention, the tiny cues that tell someone whether they’re safe, respected, or being sized up. “Awaken” is the operative verb. He’s not claiming we manufacture other people’s feelings like puppeteers; he’s saying we trigger what’s already latent. Treat someone as a suspect and you’ll get defensiveness. Treat them as competent and you’ll often call competence into being.

The line works because it flatters and indicts at once. It offers a seductive kind of control - your relationships are, in part, editable - while quietly loading responsibility onto the speaker. If your world keeps handing you hostility, Hubbard hints, check the mirror before you blame the crowd. That’s moral self-help with teeth.

Context matters: Hubbard was a turn-of-the-century American writer-businessman steeped in the efficiency-minded optimism of the Progressive Era and the Arts and Crafts movement. He sold an ethic of character as much as an aesthetic: intention, craftsmanship, self-command. This maxim fits that world perfectly, translating social life into a practical technology. It’s not therapy talk; it’s interpersonal engineering.

There’s also a sharp subtext about power. The “attitude of mind” held by a boss, a teacher, a parent can become a self-fulfilling script for everyone beneath them. Hubbard’s sentence can read like good manners, but it doubles as a warning: contempt is contagious, and so is regard.