More on character

I would like to continue with challenging statements on character that I found in a book called When No One Sees. We can all learn something from these:

Always take your job seriously, never yourself. – Dwight Eisenhower.

The moderation in virtue of a single character probably prevented this revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish. His integrity was most clear, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man. – Thomas Jefferson, speaking on George Washington's role in preserving the Republic.

Without the aid of trained emotions, the intellect is powerless against the animal organism… As the King governs by his executive, so reason the man must rule the mere appetites by means of the spirited element. The head rules the belly through the chest – the seat of emotions organized by trained habit into stable elements… And all the time we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more drive, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or creativity. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful – C. S. Lewis

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little exercise every day. That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points; do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. The man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast. – William James

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. – Winston Churchill

A life not put to the test is not worth living. – Epictetus