You don’t bring the world up by finding everyone in need and helping them. You bring the world up by doing our best at home, by perfecting the lot we have been given. It feels good to the ego to say what you’re saying, but it falls flat in the face of real progress. Let me leave you with a quote from Emerson.

“Love abroad is spite at home” or, for more context here is the verse:

“Go love thy infant;

love thy wood-chopper:

be good-natured and modest:

have that grace;

and never varnish your hard,

uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off.

Thy love afar is spite at home.

Rough and graceless would be such greeting,

but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. “

Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none.”

Excerpt From

Self Reliance

Ralph Waldo Emerson