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CHARACTER

“Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
•John Wooden

"Dedicate yourself to serving others. Your rewards in life will always be in direct proportion to your service to other people."
• Brian Tracy

"Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees."
• William Marriott

"Assume a virtue, if you have it not."
• William Shakespeare

"If you want a quality, act as if you already had it."
• William James

"Act as if you were already happy - and that will tend to make you happy."
• Dale Carnegie

Growing Good Corn

There was a farmer who grew award-winning corn. Each year he entered his corn in the state fair where it won a blue ribbon. One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew it.

The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors. "How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?" the reporter asked.

"Why sir," said the farmer, "didn't you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn."

He is very much aware of the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbor's corn also improves.

So it is in other dimensions. Those who choose to be at peace must help their neighbors to be at peace. Those who choose to live well must help others to live well, for the value of a life is measured by the lives it touches. And those who choose to be happy must help others to find happiness, for the welfare of each is bound up with the welfare of all.

The lesson for each of us is this: if we are to grow good corn, we must help our neighbors grow good corn.

Author Unknown

"Hard work spotlights the character of people:
some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses,
an some don't turn up at all."
• Sam Ewig

"Avoid having your ego
so close to your position
that when your position falls,
your ego goes with it."
• Colin Powell

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened; vision cleared; ambition inspired, and success achieved."
• Helen Keller

"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies, for the hardest victory is victory over self."
• Aristotle

"Strength of character comes out of the decisions we make, temptations we face, and the conflicts of life." - Waymon Mitchell

"Reputation is character minus what you've been caught doing."
"It's better to remain silent and be thought stupid than to open your mouth and forever remove all doubt."

"I found out that the things that hurt us the most can become the fuel and the catalyst that propel us toward our destiny. It will either make you bitter or it will make you better." - T.D. Jakes

"Character is made in the small moments of our lives." - Phillips Brooks

"A solid trust is based on a consistent character." - John Maxwell

"Character is the foundation stone upon which one must build to win respect. Just as no worthy building can be erected on a week foundation, so no lasting reputation worthy of respect can be built on a weak character."

"Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His character determines the character of his organization." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

"Policies are many; principles are few. Policies will change; principles never do."

"Small men never think they’re small; great men never think they’re great.

"If freedom could be had for the wishing, everyone would be free, but an unfaltering attachment to freedom, rising above all difficulties and based on facts, not appearances, is rarely found in men, and that is why those who do possess that attachment are considered virtually superhuman." - Carlos Buonapartos (Father of Napoleon)

"What you are stands over you the while and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If a person has a private character problem, it will eventually manifest itself in a public way."