Meaning & Analysis
People tend to judge a person’s worth in line with the value he sets on himself; self-valuation shapes others’ estimation.
Insights
Self-respect signals
Poise, boundary-setting, and confident bearing act as price tags; by showing self-respect, one teaches others how to treat him.
Performative identity
Esteem is not only felt but performed—through dress, speech, and conduct—so the self-appraisal one enacts becomes a script others follow.
Anchoring of status
Initial self-claims anchor social perception; like a starting bid in a market, one’s declared value skews subsequent judgments.
Inner ledger
The proverb suggests that the truest measure begins within: a sound conscience and settled self-estimate generate steadiness that others recognize as worth.
From thing to person
It adapts a broader maxim—‘the worth of a thing is as it is esteemed’—to persons, implying that value is relational and socially conferred, yet strongly cued by self-presentation.
Historical diction
‘A body’ is an older colloquialism for ‘a person’; ‘esteem’ (from Latin aestimare, to value) betrays a market metaphor, revealing how moral and social worth were long discussed in terms of appraisal.
Goffman and habitus
Modern sociology (presentation of self; habitus) explains the mechanism: posture, tone, and routine choices encode status expectations that observers tend to ratify.
Psychological loop
Self-efficacy and the Pygmalion effect show how confidence elicits better treatment and opportunities, which then confirm the confidence—a feedback that can uplift or, when self-devaluation rules, depress.
Caveats of class and culture
The counsel is not absolute: structural inequalities and norms of modesty can penalize overt self-valuing. The wisdom is to cultivate quiet, substantive self-respect rather than noisy self-importance.
Rhetorical Devices
Gnomic causality
A compact if–then logic (‘is esteemed according as…’) states a rule of social life with aphoristic authority.
Polyptoton/semantic echo
‘Esteemed’ and ‘values’ mirror each other—public and private appraisal—tightening the proverb’s symmetry.
Market metaphor
Valuation language treats character like priced goods, translating moral stance into the economics of esteem.
Archaic phrasing
The connective ‘according as’ lends antique gravitas and a measured cadence that fits proverbial style.
Implicit imperative
Though descriptive, it nudges action: carry yourself with measured self-respect so others may esteem you rightly.
Transcription
Quotations
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.