Character and Hard Work

With a Little Personality Thrown In

"He who knows others is clever; he who know himself is enlightened."
--Lao Tse

"When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; When health is lost, something is lost; When character is lost, all is lost."
- Anonymous

It is not what we eat
but what we digest
that makes us strong;
not what we gain
but what we save
that make us rich;
not what we read
but what we remember
that makes us learned;
and not what we profess
but what we practice
that gives us Integrity.

- Anonymous

"Build your life brick upon brick. Live a life of truth, And you will look back on a life of truth. Live a life of fantasy, And you will look back on delusion."
- Unknown

"In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principal, stand like a rock."
--Thomas Jefferson

when you get what you want in your struggle for self
and the world makes you king for a day
just go to the mirror and look at yourself
and see what that man has to say

for it isn't your father or mother or wife
whose judgement upon you must pass
the fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
is the one staring back from the glass

some people may think you a straight shootin' chum
and call you a wonderful guy
but the man in the glass says you are only a bum
if you can't look him straight in the eye

you can fool the whole world down the pathways of life
and get pats on your back as you pass
but your final reward will be heartaches and tears
if you have cheated the man in the glass

he's the fellow to please, never mind the rest
for he with you clear upto the end
and you have passed your most dangerous, difficult test
if the man in the glass is your friend
--Dale Wimbrow

"Integrity is when what you say, what you do, what you think, and who you ARE all come from the same place."
--Madelyn Griffith-Haynie

"The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back."
--Abigail Van Buren

"I'd look at one of my stonecutters hammering away at a rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow, it would split in two, and I knew it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."
--Jacob A. Riis

"Every calling is great when greatly pursued."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Six minutes to six, said the clock over the information booth in New York's Grand Central Station. The tall young Army officer lifted his sunburned face and narrowed his eyes to note the exact time. His heart was pounding with a beat that choked him. In six minutes he would see the woman who had filled such a special place in his life for the past 18 months, the woman he had never seen yet whose words had sustained him unfailingly. Lt. Blandford remembered one day in particular, the worst of the fighting, when his plane had been caught in the midst of a pack of enemy planes. In one of those letters, he had confessed to her that often he felt fear, and only a few days before this battle, he had received her answer:"Of course you fear...all brave men do." Next time you doubt yourself, I want you tho hear my voice reciting to you: 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of Death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me.'....He had remembered that and it renewed his strength. He was going to hear her voice now. Four minutes to six.

A girl passed closer to him, and Lt. Blandford started. she was wearing a flower, but it was not the little red rose they had agreed upon. Besides, this girl was only about eighteen, and Hollis Maynel had told him she was 30. "What of it?" he had answered, "I'm 32." He was 29. His mind went back to that book he had read in the training camp."Of Human Bondage" it was; and throughout the book were notes in a woman's handwriting. He had never believed that a woman could see into a man's heart so tenderly, so understandingly. Her name was on the bookplate: Hollis Maynell. He got a hold of a New York City telephone book and found her address. He had written , she had answered. Next day he had been shipped out, but they had gone on writing. For thirteen months she had faithfully replied. When his letters did not arrive, she wrote anyway, and now he believed he loved her, and she loved him. But she had refused all his pleas to send him her photograph. She had explained: "If your feeling for me had no reality, what I look like won't matter. Suppose I am beautiful. I'd always be haunted that you had been taking a chance on just that, and that kind of love would disgust me.

Suppose that I'm plain, (and you must admit that this is more likely), then I'd always fear that you were only going on writing because you were lonely and had no one else. No, don't ask for my picture. When you come to New York, you shall see me and then you shall make your own decision."

One minute to six...he flipped the pages of the book he held. Then Lt. Blandford's heart lept. A young woman was coming toward him. Her figure was long and slim; her blond hair lay back in curls from delicate ears. Her eyes were blue as flowers, her lips and chin had a gentle firmness. In her pale-green suit, she was like springtime come alive. He started toward her, forgetting to notice that she was wearing no rose, and as he moved, a small, provacative smile curved her lips. "Going my way, soldier?" she murmured.

He made one step closer to her. Then he saw Hollis Maynell. She was standing almost directly behind the girl, a woman well past 40, her graying hair tucked under a worn hat. She was more than plump. Her thick-ankled feet were thrust into low-heeled shoes. But she wore a red rose on her rumpled coat. The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away.

Blandford felt as though he were being split in two, so keen was his desire to follow the girl, yet so deep was his longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned and upheld his own, and there she stood. He could see her pale face was gentle and sensible; her gray eyes had a warm twinkle.

Lt. Blandford did not hesitate. His fingers gripped the worn copy of "Of Human Bondage" which was to identify him to her. This would not be love, but it would be something special, a friendship for which he had been and must be ever grateful...

He squared his shoulders, saluted, and held the book out toward the woman, although even while he spoke he felt the bitterness of his disappointment. "I'm Lt. Blandford, and you're Miss Maynell. I'm so glad you could meet me. May--may I take you to dinner?"

The woman's face broadened in a tolerant smile. "I don't know what this is all about, son," she answered. "That young lady in the green suit, she begged me to wear this rose on my coat. And she said that if you asked me to go out with you, I should tell you she's waiting for you in that restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test."
--Unknown

"Failure is only an opportunity to begin again more intelligently."
--Henry Ford

"If you do not ask, the answer is always no."
-- Owen Laughlin (contributed by Matthew D. S. Pugh)

"If at first you don't succeed, skydiving's not for you."
-- Anonymous (contributed by Matthew D. S. Pugh)

"It's an impossible situation, but it has possibilities."
-- Samuel Goldwyn (contributed by Matthew D. S. Pugh)

"If a man is primarily after wealth, the world can whip him; if he is primarily after pleasure, the world can beat him; but if a man is primarily growing a personality, then he can capitalize on anything that life does to him."
-- Dr. Harry Fosdick

"Every man in a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit."
-- Elbert Hubbard

"But if a man happens to find himself . . . he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life."
-- James Michner

"A great man is always willing to be little."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds can change the outer aspects of their lives."
-- William James

"The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them; a man may live long yet live very little."
-- Montaigne

"There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated."
--Nietzsche

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
--Theodore Roosevelt

"That best portion of a good man’s life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love."
--William Wordsworth

"The hottest corners of hell are reserved for those who, during a moment of crises, maintain their neutrality."

"In the world to come I shall not be asked, 'Why were you not Moses?' I should be asked, 'Why were you not Zusya?'"
--Rabbi Zusya

"Those who wish to sing always find a song."
--Swedish proverb

"A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes."
--Hugh Downs

"It is the habitual thought that frames itself into our life. It affects us even more that our intimate social relations do.. Our confidential friends have not so much to do in shaping our lives as the thought which we harbor."
--J.W. Teal

"Keep away form people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
--Mark Twain

"The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there where no dark valleys to traverse."
--Helen Keller

"History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats."
--B.C. Forbes

"Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."
--Calvin Coolidge

"Life is like riding a bicycle. You don’t fall off unless you stop pedaling."
--Claude Pepper

"It’s not how long a man lives, but how well he uses the time allotted to him."
--Martin Luther King Jr.

"I think that giant American corporations should start asking themselves if the things they make are really, I mean really, better than the ordinary.
Clearly people want things that make their lives the way they wish they were."
--J. Peterman

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
--Albert Einstein

"There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living."
--David Starr Jordan

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor."
--Henry David Thoreau

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

"That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time."
--John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

"What the child sees, the child does. What the child does, the child is."
--Irish Proverb

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
--Henry David Thoreau

"The tragic evils of our life are so commonly unintentional. We did not start out for that poor, cheap goal. That aim was not in our minds at all....Look to the road you are walking on. He who picks up one end of [a] stick picks up the other.
He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to.”
--Harry Emerson Fosdick

"It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage."
--Henry Ward Beecher

"We would often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives which produced them."
--Duc de La Rochefoucauld

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
--Mark Twain

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
--Elbert Hubbard

"The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."
--General Omar Bradley

"The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."
--Thomas Babington Macaulay

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, but others judge us by what we have already done.”
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.”
--Booker T Washington

“Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”
--Seneca (4 BC-65 AD)

“The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a poor hand well.”
--HT Leslie

“Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.”
--Benjamin Franklin

“Nature gave man two ends - one to sit on and one to thing with. Ever since then man’s success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most.”
--George R Kirkpatrick

“Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe more, talk less, say more, hate less, love more, and all good things will be yours.”
--Swedish Proverb

“It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”
--Alfred Adler

“I have learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
--Henry David Thoreau

“In the end, it is attention to detail that makes all the difference. It’s the center fielder’s extra two steps to the left, the salesman’s memory for names, the lover’s phone call, the soldier’s clean weapon. It is the thing that separates the winners from the losers, the men from the boys and very often, the living from the dead.”
--David Noonan

“One of the reasons that we find so few persons rational and agreeable in conversation is that there is hardly a person who does not think more of what he wants to say than of his answer to what is said.”
--La Rochefoucauld

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
--Thomas Jefferson

“I would rather men should ask why no statue has been erected in my honor, than why one has.”
--Marcus Cato (2nd century BC)

“We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.”
--Frank Tibolt

“Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.”
--Eric Hoffer

“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.”
--Confucius

“To the dull mind all of nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light.”
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world it will come through the expression of your own personality, that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.”
--Bruce Barton

“It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”
--Alfred Adler

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