Meaning

At first glance this instruction sounds simple, yet it carries considerable weight. To revere yourself means more than ordinary self-esteem. It means treating your own conscience, your own capacities, and your own inner life as something genuinely sacred. The placement of the phrase "above all things" makes the point even sharper: before duties to others, before social reputation, the relationship you have with yourself sets the standard for everything else.

Context

This line comes from the Golden Verses, a text associated with the Pythagorean tradition and its rules for ethical living. The Pythagoreans believed that cultivating the inner self was inseparable from any serious philosophical or spiritual practice. The idea of self-reverence in that tradition was not vanity or pride but rather a recognition that the soul has an inherent dignity that must not be cheapened by careless choices or by surrendering moral judgment to others. The instruction echoes across many later schools of thought that place personal integrity at the center of the good life.

About the author

Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher and mathematician active in the sixth century BCE. He established a community, often described as a philosophical brotherhood, whose members lived by a shared set of practices and beliefs. His influence touched mathematics, cosmology, and ethics alike. Because he left no writings that survive with certainty as his own, much of what is attributed to him comes through the accounts and writings of later followers and commentators.