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Phrase: To Thine Own Self Be True
When learning English, you cannot avoid Shakespeare.
The man pops up everywhere in spoken and written English.
Today’s phrase, ‘to thine own self be true,’ is only part of a quote from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.
Often only the first part is used to advise someone.
If you are interested in the full quote, here it is:
To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
Spoken by Polonius in Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Don’t let the old style of English confuse you.
‘Thine’ simply means ‘your,’ and ‘canst’ means ‘can’t.’
Here’s a translation into modern English: Be honest with yourself, and it’s guaranteed you will be a good person.
So what does it mean, and why would you use it?
Well, there are three possible interpretations.
The first and easiest is that you should always be honest and do the right thing.
If you do that, you can still feel good about yourself and not feel any shame.
The second is that you will always be better able to judge yourself if you do what you should do.
I think this means to follow social norms such as don’t litter, tell the truth and generally do your best to be a good person.
Finally, the third is always to be honest with yourself and others.
You can say ‘to thine own self be true‘ to give others advice when deciding about something but don’t know what to do.
If they are honest and try to do the right thing, any decision they make will be a good one.
Always try to be the best version of yourself.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 80.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.