On being overtrusted, overbefriended and overconsulted; or, Responsibility

Talent, knowledge, humility, reverence, magnanimity involve the inconvenience of responsibility or they die…

Example is needed, not counsel; but let me submit here these four precepts:

Feed imagination food that invigorates

Whatever it is, do it with all your might

Never do to another what you would not wish done to yourself.

Say to yourself, “I will be responsible.”

Put these principles to the test, and you will be inconvenienced by being overtrusted, overbefriended, overconsulted, half adopted, and have no leisure. Face that when you come to it.

--Marianne Moore