CHARACTER
“Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.”
Winston Churchill
“People, even the wicked, are much more naïve and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Important events—whether serious, happy or unfortunate—do not change a man’s soul, they merely bring it into relief, just as a strong gust of wind reveals the true shape of a tree when it blows off all its leaves. Such events highlight what is hidden in the shadows.”
Irene Nemirovsky
“Whoever thinks that he alone possesses intelligence, the gift of eloquence, he and no one else, and character too … such men, I tell you, spread them open—you will find them empty.”
Sophocles
“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”
Eric Hoffer
“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”
Samuel Johnson
“Character is destiny.”
Heraclitus
CONFORMISM
“Be orderly and regular in your life, like a bourgeois, so that you may be wild and original in your work.”
Gustave Flaubert
“What I realized much later, paradoxically, is that by trying to fit in, I was strengthening the culture that made me feel like I didn’t fit in.”
Melinda Gates
“The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you but yourself.”
Rita Mae Brown
“We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it.”
John Hughes
COURAGE
“Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all others.”
Winston Churchill
“One man with courage makes a majority.”
Andrew Jackson (attributed, not confirmed)
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”
Mark Twain
“Strength and courage are not things that happen to us; they are choices we make. They are the heavenly markers by which we set the course for our lives.”
Bryceson Tenold
CYNICISM
“Cynicism is a dangerous disease, a cancer of the soul. Often, we don’t know we have it, until it’s too late, until part of us has died. It’s also contagious.”
Daniel Gordis
“Cynicism is often a product of disappointed idealism—of naïveté being crushed by reality.”
James Taranto
“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.”
Hannah Arendt
“I try to be cynical, but it’s hard to keep up.”
Lily Tomlin
DISAPPOINTMENT
“Disappointment is the gap between expectation and reality.”
Mordehai Mironi
“Nowadays, I don’t have expectations [of her], and this way she beats them all.”
Jodi Picoult, in My Sister’s Keeper
“There is a special form of disappointment when you feel disappointed even after you expected to be disappointed.”
Sam Siegel
ENTHUSIASM
“Sometimes the appetite comes with the eating.”
Israeli saying
“Once you lose your enthusiasm, you lose your integrity. And once you lose your integrity, you’re a con man.”
Russ Reid
“Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.”
James Baldwin
FAITH
“If gods exist, you have nothing to fear in taking leave of mankind, for they will not let you come to harm. But if there are no gods, or if they have no concern with mortal affairs, what is life to me in a world devoid of gods or devoid of Providence?”
Marcus Aurelius
“When a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.”
G. K. Chesterton
“O Lord, if there is a Lord, save my soul, if I have a soul.”
Ernest Renan
HAPPINESS
“The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.”
Martha Washington
“Happiness is not a goal. It is a by-product of a life well lived.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
“A man has happiness if he possesses three things—those whom he loves and who love him in turn, confidence in the worth and continued existence of the group of which he is a part, and last of all, a truth by which he may order his being.”
Milton Steinberg
“We’re all searching for happiness; we’re all living lives that are different and yet the same.”
Anne Frank
“If you’re not happy where you are, you won’t be happy where you aren’t.”
Morton Kondracke
“There is a kind of happiness in unhappiness, if it is the right unhappiness.”
Jonathan Franzen
“I’m always happy. Sometimes I just forget.”
Jennifer Egan
“Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.”
Roland Barthes
“They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?”
Princess Diana
“The goal of psychoanalysis is to turn neurotic misery into everyday unhappiness.”
Sigmund Freud
“Risk-taking, trust and serendipity are key ingredients of joy. Without risk, nothing new ever happens. Without trust, fear creeps in. Without serendipity, there are no surprises.”
Rita Golden Gelman
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
Copyright © 2021 by Seth M. Siegel