Honor

Definition

The reputation a person builds with himself through repeated choices.

The lesson

Honor is not public approval. It is the ability to look honestly at one’s life and know that one has acted according to a worthy code. It is built slowly and damaged quickly.

Honor is the reputation you keep with yourself when nobody is scoring you. Choose a standard small enough to fail on a Tuesday. Keep it when it is inconvenient. Do not trade it for approval, and do not confuse other people’s opinion of you with that private score.

How. Write one standard you could fail tomorrow. Keep it once today when it would be easier not to.

Watch. A speech about honor while the people closest to you get the sharpest version of you.

The book finishes this. How honor is built over years and damaged in an afternoon, told in the lives that make that sentence more than a warning.

The rest of this virtue