What is character? It is that quality of man which is going to make a man, in an hour of strain, do the just and, if possible, the generous thing.
Interpretation
Character is defined by our actions during challenging times, reflecting moral integrity and generosity.
In this quote, Douglas Southall Freeman emphasizes that true character is revealed when a person faces significant pressure or hardship. It is during these moments of strain that an individual's moral compass is tested, and the response—whether it is to act justly or generously—defines their essence and integrity as a human being.
In practice
This quote can be used during a leadership seminar to discuss the importance of character in decision-making under pressure.
Character is the essence of all that a man has seen in life and regards as high and exalted. Character is like truth: the substance of the things that a man has forgotten but the substance of the things that are worth remembering in life.
I almost think that hope is for the soul what breathing is for the living organism. Where hope is lacking the soul dries up and withers.
What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of the everyday... He consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. He wanted, quite simply, for the world to be a better place, and he was in the habit of hoping for it.
Christians will want to be in the vanguard in favoring ways of life that decisively break with the exhausting and joyless frenzy of consumerism.
When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
The premonition of madness is complicated by the fear of lucidity in madness, the fear of the moments of return and reunion... One would welcome chaos if one were not afraid of lights in it.
He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.
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