P04 · Discipline and Character
Character and moral integrity
Treating virtue and integrity as the sole true good across all circumstances.
Cues
Showing 20 of 26 cues
“In your actions, don’t procrastinate. In your conversations, don’t confuse. In your thoughts, don’t wander. In your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business.”
“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be One.”
“What have I done wrong? What have I done well? What have I omitted that I ought to have done?”
“Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.”
“It is possible to curb your arrogance, to overcome pleasure and pain, to rise above your ambition, and to not be angry with stupid and ungrateful people; yes, even to care for them.”
“If it is not right, do not do it, if it is not true, do not say it.”
“If you didn’t learn these things in order to demonstrate them in practice, what did you learn them for?”
“Whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my colour.”
“Do you ask what it is that I seek in virtue? Only herself. For she offers nothing better; she herself is her own reward. Or does this seem to you too small a thing?”
“A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.”
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
“To “give style” to one’s character - a great and rare art. It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye.”
“A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition ... I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways ... Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.”
“Let your every deed and thought be those of one who might depart from life this very moment.”
“If a person does not become what he understands, then he does not understand it either.”
“What does your conscience say? ‘You shall become the person you are’.”
“Self-knowledge is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth. In this sense, to work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation, but at the same time, in a very real sense, the prime moral privilege. To the extent that we take our growth seriously, it will be because of our own desire to do so.”
“To be ashamed only of what was really shameful, and to ignore men’s low opinion of other things.”
“Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people ... and ask yourself whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and eternal resistance ... do not belong among the favorable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible.”
“A child certainly allows himself to be impressed by the grand talk of his parents, but do they really imagine he is educated by it? Actually it is the parents’ lives that educate the child - what they add by word at best serves only to confuse him.”