Character Defect Quotes

There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." "And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.

There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul.

It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.

Make New Year's goals. Dig within, and discover what you would like to have happen in your life this year. This helps you do your part. It is an affirmation that you're interested in fully living life in the year to come. Goals give us direction. They put a powerful force into play on a universal, conscious, and subconscious level. Goals give our life direction. What would you like to have happen in your life this year? What would you like to do, to accomplish? What good would you like to attract into your life? What particular areas of growth would you like to have happen to you? What blocks, or character defects, would you like to have removed? What would you like to attain? Little things and big things? Where would you like to go? What would you like to have happen in friendship and love? What would you like to have happen in your family life? What problems would you like to see solved? What decisions would you like to make? What would you like to happen in your career? Write it down. Take a piece of paper, a few hours of your time, and write it all down - as an affirmation of you, your life, and your ability to choose. Then let it go. The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.

No change in circumstances can repair a defect of character.

A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.

You are the biggest fool of a boy I've ever known," Mott said. Then his tone softened. "But you will serve Carthya well." "I wish I felt ready to do this," I said. "The closer we come to the moment, the more I see every defect in my character that caused my parents to send me away in the first place." "From all I'm told, the prince they sent away was selfish, mischievous, and destructive. The king who returns is courageous, noble, and strong." "And a fool," I added Mott chuckled. "You are that too.

I had to bite back a laugh. "Cary Taylor. Loving you isn't a character defect." Chapter 12, pg 213

The distinction between diseases of "brain" and "mind," between "neurological" problems and "psychological" or "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind. Diseases of the brain are seen as tragedies visited on people who cannot be blamed for their condition, while diseases of the mind, especially those that affect conduct and emotion, are seen as social inconveniences for which sufferers have much to answer. Individuals are to be blamed for their character flaws, defective emotional modulation, and so on; lack of willpower is supposed to be the primary problem.

Cary Taylor. Loving you isn’t a character defect.” “Well, it’s not very smart. I was such an asshole to him,” he muttered, looking disgruntled. “He could do so much better.” “That isn’t your decision to make for him.” “Someone needs to make it.” “And you’re volunteering because you love him, too.” My mouth curved. “Don’t you think that sounds ass-backwards?

By protecting our children from adversity, have we made them deathly afraid of it? By bolstering their self-esteem with false praise and a lack of real-world consequences, have we made them less tolerant, more entitled, and ignorant of their own character defects? By giving in to their every desire, have we encouraged a new age of hedonism?

It is very difficult to develop a proper sense of self-esteem in a dysfunctional family. Having very little self-worth, looking at one’s own character defects becomes so overwhelming there is no room for inward focus. People so afflicted think: “I need to keep you from knowing me. I have already rejected me, but if you knew how flawed I am, you would also reject me…and since this is all I have, I could not stand any more rejection. I am not worthy of someone understanding me so you will not get the chance...so I must judge, reject, attack, and/or find fault with you. I don’t accept me so how can I accept you?

It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of te chest beneath that makes them seem so.

The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.

We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live.

I have come to realize that useless, directionless anger is one of my greatest character defects, and when I indulge myself in it, I am remaining in a problem, not its solution.

It is very humbling to see my own character defects in someone who annoys me. At the end of the day, I realize they have actually prompted positive change in me.

It's at moments like these in a game that the essentials of his character are exposed: narrow, ineffectual, stupid—and morally so. The game becomes an extended metaphor of character defect. Every error he makes is so profoundly, so irritatingly typical of himself, instantly familiar, like a signature, like a tissue scar or some deformation in a private place.

Sloth is the thief of time. The character defect of putting off actions “until things get better” is one of the most destructive detours we can make. Delays never make problems “go away;” they only make success harder to attain.

My experience with age it instills a degree of patience in some, leaves the virtuous spiritually unchanged, feeds the character defects in others, and brings little wisdom to any of us.

So you see,' said Stepan Arkadyich, 'you're a very wholesome man. That is your virtue and your defect. You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to be made up of wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen. So you despise the activity of public service because you want things always to correspond to their aim, and that doesn't happen. You also want the activity of the individual man always to have an aim, that love and family life always be one. And that doesn't happen. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

The Now Habit perspective does not accept that laziness, disorganization, or any other character defect is the reason you procrastinate.

Every day I stand at turning points. My thoughts and actions can propel me toward growth or turn me down the road to old habits and to booze. Sometimes turning points are beginnings, as when I decide to start praising, instead of condemning someone. Or when I begin to ask for help instead of going it alone. At other times turning points are endings, such as when I see clearly the need to stop festering resentments or crippling self-seeking. Many shortcomings tempt me daily; therefore, I also have daily opportunities to become aware of them. In one form or another, many of my character defects appear daily: self-condemnation, anger, running away, being prideful, wanting to get even, or acting out of grandiosity. Attempting half measures to eliminate these defects merely paralyzes my efforts to change. It is only when I ask God for help, with complete abandon, that I become willing—and able—to change.

Reckless. Insatiable. Deceptive. Clingy. Vain. Dismissive. Trivial. Violent. Tactless. Controlling. Impractical. Fearful. Think of one example in your past where you exhibited each of these traits. Whatever memory comes to your mind will usually provide you with a clear illustration. Know that you have the capacity to exhibit all defects.

The fundamental defect of the female character is a lack of a sense of justice. This originates first and foremost in their want of rationality and capacity for reflexion but it is strengthened by the fact that, as the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell lies: for, as nature has equipped the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with tusks, the wild boar with fangs, the bull with horns and the cuttlefish with ink, so it has equipped woman with the power of dissimulation as her means of attack and defence, and has transformed into this gift all the strength it has bestowed on man in the form of physical strength and the power of reasoning. Dissimulation is thus inborn in her and consequently to be found in the stupid woman almost as often as in the clever one. To make use of it at every opportunity is as natural to her as it is for an animal to employ its means of defence whenever it is attacked, and when she does so she feels that to some extent she is only exercising her rights. A completely truthful woman who does not practice dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, which is why women see through the dissimulation of others so easily it is inadvisable to attempt it with them. – But this fundamental defect which I have said they possess, together with all that is associated with it, gives rise to falsity, unfaithfulness, treachery, ingratitude, etc. Women are guilty of perjury far more often than men. It is questionable whether they ought to be allowed to take an oath at all.

If we are humble, we are open to new ideas and new ways of seeing things. Open-mindedness is a very important part of humility. We don’t know it all. There is still more we can learn. And maybe even more important, some we need to unlearn.

That's all right! That's all right!' But for a minute or two it wasn't really. All feminine claws, he said to himself, are sheathed in velvet; but they can hurt a good deal if they touch you on the sore places of the defects of your qualities - even merely with the velvet. He added: 'Your mother works you very hard.

In the same way the failures which a man makes in his life are due almost always to some defect in his personality, some weakness of body, or mind, or character, will, or temperament. The only way to overcome these failings is to build up his personality from within, so that he, by virtue of what is within him, may overcome the weakness which was the cause of the failure. It is only those efforts the man himself puts forth that can really help him.

When I knew I couldn't suffer another moment of pain, and tears fell on my bloody bindings, my mother spoke softly into my ear, encouraging me to go one more hour, one more day, one more week, reminding me of the rewards I would have if I carried on a little longer. In this way, she taught me how to endure--not just the physical trials of footbinding and childbearing but the more tortuous pain of the heart, mind, and soul. She was also pointing out my defects and teaching me how to use them to my benefit. In our country, we call this type of mother love teng ai. My son has told me that in men's writing it is composed of two characters. The first means pain; the second means love. That is a mother's love.

The process of miraculous change is twofold.  One:  I see my error or dysfunctional pattern.  Two: I ask God to take it from me.  The first principle without the second is impotent.  As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, your best thinking got you here.  You're the problem but you're not the answer. The second principle isn't enough to change us either. The Holy Spirit can't take from us what we will not release to him.  He won't work without our consent.  He cannot remove our character defects without our willingness, because that would be violating our free will.  We chose those patterns, however mistakenly, and he will not force us to give them up.  In asking God to heal us, we're committing to the choice to be healed.

Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to see mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters.

fear is the darkroom where negatives are developed.

God give me the courage and strength to know who I really am, to act accordingly in my life, and to refrain from diverting my time, energy, and interest into my character defects.

It was truly amazing what character defects people would tolerate if one had a title, a fortune, and a few interesting scars.

Don't be too worthwhile. Always keep a few character defects handy. People love to talk about your frailties.If you must be noble, keep it to yourself

sexual jealousy, once considered by psychologists to be pathological or a character defect, is in fact a supremely important emotion motivating mate-retention solutions. Adaptive in the evolutionary sense of leading to greater survival and reproductive success, of course, does not mean morally good.

The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. "The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by the discovery. It was miraculous. "It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue, slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

So too the poet, in representing men who are irascible or indolent, or have other defects of character, should preserve the type and yet ennoble it.

Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character; the defect does not depend on time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive object, as passion directs. For to such persons, as to the incontinent, knowledge brings no profit; but to those who desire and act in accordance with a rational principle knowledge about such matters will be of great benefit.

One could not but play for a moment with the thought of what might have happened if Charlotte Brontë had possessed say three hundred a year — but the foolish woman sold the copyright of her novels outright for fifteen hundred pounds; had somehow possessed more knowledge of the busy world, and towns and regions full of life; more practical experience, and intercourse with her kind and acquaintance with a variety of character. In those words she puts her finger exactly not only upon her own defects as a novelist but upon those of her sex. at that time. She knew, no one better, how enormously her genius would have profited if it had not spent itself in solitary visions over distant fields; if experience and intercourse and travel had been granted her. But they were not granted; they were withheld; and we must accept the fact that all those good novels, VILLETTE, EMMA, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, MIDDLEMARCH, were written by women without more experience of life than could enter the house of a respectable clergyman; written too in the common sitting-room of that respectable house and by women so poor that they could not afford to, buy more than a few quires of paper at a time upon which to write WUTHERING HEIGHTS or JANE EYRE.

treachery of the common n. the fear that everyone around the world is pretty much the same-that despite our local quirks, we were all mass-produced in the same factory, built outward from the same generic homunculus, preinstalled with the same tribal compulsions and character defects- which would leave you out of options if you ever want to reinvent yourself, or seek out a better society on the other side of the globe.

Genius' was a word loosely used by expatriot Americans in Paris and Rome, between the Versailles Peace treaty and the Depression, to cover all varieties of artistic, literary and musical experimentalism. A useful and readable history of the literary Thirties is Geniuses Together by Kay Boyle-Joyce, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Pound, Eliot and the rest. They all became famous figures but too many of them developed defects of character-ambition, meanness, boastfulness, cowardice or inhumanity-that defrauded their early genius. Experimentalism is a quality alien to genius. It implies doubt, hope, uncertainty, the need for group reassurance; whereas genius works alone, in confidence of a foreknown result. Experiments are useful as a demonstration of how not to write, paint or compose if one's interest lies in durable rather than fashionable results; but since far more self-styled artists are interested in frissons á la mode rather than in truth, it is foolish to protest. Experimentalism means variation on the theme of other people's uncertainties.

No growth is possible,’ he would say, ‘without conscious labour and voluntary suffering.’ By this he meant that we cannot attain something without payment, or sacrifice—not in the sense of morbid self-punishment, but rather in the necessity of giving something up in order to make space for something new. What we ‘give up’ can be something intangible like low self-worth, or even laziness, or some other character defect like vanity or pride.

Since most of us are born with an abundance of natural desires, it isn’t strange that we often let these far exceed their intended purpose. When they drive us blindly, or we willfully demand that they supply us with more satisfactions or pleasures than are possible or due us, that is the point at which we depart from the degree of perfection that God wishes for us here on earth. That is the measure of our character defects, or, if you wish, of our sins. If we ask, God will certainly forgive our derelictions. But in no case does He render us white as snow and keep us that way without our cooperation. That is something we are supposed to be willing to work toward ourselves. He asks only that we try as best we know how to make progress in the building of character.

limited by what is commonly referred to as dualism—the idea of a distinct and inherently real “self” that is separate from an apparently distinct and inherently real “other.” As we’ll explore later, dualism is not a “character flaw” or defect. It’s a complex survival mechanism deeply rooted in the structure and function of the brain—

True friends seek together to live truer, fuller lives by relating to each other authentically and by teaching each other about the limitations of their beliefs and the defects in their character, which are a far greater source of error than mere rational confusion.

of our prayer and meditation.

In the arena of human life, the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.

Many of us still think our value as a human being is in what we do or what we don’t do, rather than who we are.

I don’t get to choose which defects God will remove.

In my recovery, I learned that the pain of my defects is the very substance God uses to cleanse my character and to set me free.

Courage is what makes us do the right thing even when nobody else is doing it.

The principles of Twelve Step recovery are the opposite of our character defects.

So what can be done about dangerousness? How can we intervene in cases of mental instability or character defect before it’s too late?

To become the person we can become, we must drop the rock—all the grasping and holding on to old patterns of behaving, thinking, and feeling that are harmful to ourselves and to others.

It was in the defects that they [servants] invariably acquired that I learned of my own natural, invariable defects, and their character presented me with a sort of negative proof of my own.

My Lady, you certainly tell me about wonderful constancy, strength and virtue and firmness of women, so can one say the same thing about men? (...) Response [by Lady Rectitude]: "Fair sweet friend, have you not yet heard the saying that the fool sees well enough a small cut in the face of his neighbour, but he disregards the great gaping one above his own eye? I will show you the great contradiction in what the men say about the changeability and inconstancy of women. It is true that they all generally insist that women are very frail [= fickle] by nature. And since they accuse women of frailty, one would suppose that they themselves take care to maintain a reputation for constancy, or at the very least, that the women are indeed less so than they are themselves. And yet, it is obvious that they demand of women greater constancy than they themselves have, for they who claim to be of this strong and noble condition cannot refrain from a whole number of very great defects and sins, and not out of ignorance, either, but out of pure malice, knowing well how badly they are misbehaving. But all this they excuse in themselves and say that it is in the nature of man to sin, yet if it so happens that any women stray into any misdeed (of which they themselves are the cause by their great power and longhandedness), then it's suddenly all frailty and inconstancy, they claim. But it seems to me that since they do call women frail, they should not support that frailty, and not ascribe to them as a great crime what in themselves they merely consider a little defect.

What is this self, this I that I am? I know not. One fine day, I awoke to find myself upon this earth; I discovered my fate to be forever linked with a certain body, character, estate. Am I to spend all my days, then, ineffectually seeking to alter that which cannot be altered, and so, meanwhile, forget to live? Rather do I propose to accept myself as I am, humbly submitting to my own defects.

The word “autistic” is accurate. But so are other words that we no longer use to describe people: spinster (unmarried woman), hobo (migrant worker), cripple (person with a physical handicap), and so on. The fact that a person is unmarried or has sustained a mobility-reducing injury or birth defect certainly figures into their life experiences, but it does not define their character—unless they or we let it.

Sponsor said relationships are fertilizer for character defects. I thought about it, prayed about it, and agreed. I guess it's better to minimize damage, adopt a sane and sound ideal, and buy pussy from now on.

He accepted the deformity which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but no he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power of introspection which had given him so much delight. Without it he would never have had his keen appreciation of beauty, his passion for art and literature, and his interest in the varied spectacle of life. […] Then he saw that normal was the rarest thing in the world. Everyone had some defect of body or of mind […] The only reasonable thing was to accept the good of men and be patient with their faults.

I have provided a possible explanation for Antiochus's insane foolhardiness when left in command of the Athenian Fleet, because Thucidides's bald account is so unbelievable (unless one assumes that both Antiochus and Alkibiades were mentally defective) that any explanation seems more likely than none. Alkibiades himself is an enigma. Even allowing that no man is all black and all white, few men can ever have been more wildly and magnificently piebald. Like another strange and contradictory character Sir Walter Raleigh, he casts a glamour that comes clean down the centuries, a dazzle of personal magnetism that makes it hard to see the man behind it. I have tried to see. I have tried to fit the pieces into a coherent whole; I don't know whether I have been successful or not; but I do not think that I have anywhere falsified the portrait.

it's going great. Two months in, and I've created three apps." "Apps?" "For people who buy my book as an e-book --which will be everybody. The first is called Don't Look. It's for the overly sensitive. It blurs and turns the type red when a dog dies or a baby is born with a birth defect. Stuff like that. My second is It's Not Okay When You Say It, and it delivers an electrical zap if the reader laughs at a racial slur. My third is Jesus Thesaurus, which replaces explicit sexual language with church words. So, when one of my characters 'saints' a guy's 'disciple', He'll beg her to 'cavalry' his 'Baptists' and 'shout amen'.

Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me." "There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil—a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." "And your defect is to hate everybody." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is willfully to misunderstand them.

I was powerless over my childhood but the coping strategies that I developed, to survive, all of which were creative and brilliant and got me through, as an adult those became my defects of character. Those became my shortcomings, control and all that kind of stuff... and that's my responsibility. I was a blameless child in what happened in the home; I take responsibility for my behaviors as an adult.

Now each man judges well the things he knows, and of these he is a good judge. And so the man who has been educated in a subject is a good judge of that subject, and the man who has received an all-round education is a good judge in general. Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character; the defect does not depend on time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive object, as passion directs. For to such persons, as to the incontinent, knowledge brings no profit; but to those who desire and act in accordance with a rational principle knowledge about such matters will be of great benefit.

In recovery, we try to take the opposite of our character defects/shortcomings and turn them into principles. For example, we work to change fear into faith, hate into love, egoism into humility, anxiety and worry into serenity, complacency into action, denial into acceptance, jealousy into trust, fantasizing into reality, selfishness into service, resentment into forgiveness, judgmentalism into tolerance, despair into hope, self-hate into self-respect, and loneliness into fellowship. Through this work we learn to understand the principles of our program.

As we’re taught in the Twelve Steps, the chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear. Mainly fear that we would lose something we already possessed or that we would fail to get something we demanded. Living on the basis of unsatisfied demands, we obviously were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration. Therefore, we are taught, there will be no peace unless we are able to reduce these demands.

That is a failing indeed!" cried Elizabeth. "Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me." "There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil—a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." "And your defect is to hate everybody." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is willfully to misunderstand them." "Do

For as we would wish that a painter who is to draw a beautiful face, in which there is yet some imperfection, should neither wholly leave out, nor yet too pointedly express what is defective, because this would deform it, and that spoil the resemblance; so since it is hard, or indeed perhaps impossible, to show the life of a man wholly free from blemish, in all that is excellent we must follow truth exactly, and give it fully; any lapses or faults that occur, through human passions or political necessities, we may regard rather as the shortcomings of some particular virtue, than as the natural effects of vice; and may be content without introducing them, curiously and officiously, into our narrative, if it be but out of tenderness to the weakness of nature, which has never succeeded in producing any human character so perfect in virtue as to be pure from all admixture and open to no criticism.

Each one of us is more likely to believe someone when they point out our flaws and can connect what we know to be true about our character defects with their complaints of us. It is the perfect set up for the survivor to take the responsibility and allow the abuser to be completely off the hook.   Almost

There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment... ... There are other things of less importance. There is the instance of the Gadarene swine where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put devils into them and make them rush down the hill to the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but he chooses to send them into the pigs. Then there is the curious story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened about the fig-tree. 'He was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when He came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time for figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever,"...and Peter... saith unto Him: "Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away".' This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in matter of wisdom or in matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects.

Every major power has some widely publicized justification for its procurement and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction, often including a reptilian reminder of the presumed character and cultural defects of potential enemies (as opposed to us stout fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world.

Faith itself became a “good work” that I could perform, and the ego was back in charge. Such a mechanical notion of salvation frequently led to all the right religious words, without much indication of self-critical or culturally critical behavior. Usually, there was little removal of most “defects of character,” and many Christians have remained thoroughly materialistic, warlike, selfish, racist, sexist, and greedy for power and money—while relying on “amazing grace” to snatch them into heaven at the end.

It is foolish to wish for beauty.  Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others.  If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.  So said the teachers of our childhood; and so say we to the children of the present day.  All very judicious and proper, no doubt; but are such assertions supported by actual experience? We are naturally disposed to love what gives us pleasure, and what more pleasing than a beautiful face—when we know no harm of the possessor at least?  A little girl loves her bird—Why?  Because it lives and feels; because it is helpless and harmless?  A toad, likewise, lives and feels, and is equally helpless and harmless; but though she would not hurt a toad, she cannot love it like the bird, with its graceful form, soft feathers, and bright, speaking eyes.  If a woman is fair and amiable, she is praised for both qualities, but especially the former, by the bulk of mankind: if, on the other hand, she is disagreeable in person and character, her plainness is commonly inveighed against as her greatest crime, because, to common observers, it gives the greatest offence; while, if she is plain and good, provided she is a person of retired manners and secluded life, no one ever knows of her goodness, except her immediate connections.  Others, on the contrary, are disposed to form unfavourable opinions of her mind, and disposition, if it be but to excuse themselves for their instinctive dislike of one so unfavoured by nature; and visa versa with her whose angel form conceals a vicious heart, or sheds a false, deceitful charm over defects and foibles that would not be tolerated in another. 

Appearing as a character in my brother’s books taught me something about myself. For most of my life, my history as an abused child with what I saw as a personality defect was shameful and embarrassing. Being a failure and a high school dropout was humiliating, no matter how well I subsequently did. I lied about my age, my education, and my upbringing for years because the truth was just too horrible to reveal. His book, and people’s remarkable acceptance of us as we are, changed all that. I was finally free.

Twenty centuries later, Jesus speaks pointedly to the preening ascetic trapped in the fatal narcissism of spiritual perfectionism, to those of us caught up in boasting about our victories in the vineyard, to those of us fretting and flapping about our human weaknesses and character defects. The child doesn’t have to struggle to get himself in a good position for having a relationship with God; he doesn’t have to craft ingenious ways of explaining his position to Jesus; he doesn’t have to create a pretty face for himself; he doesn’t have to achieve any state of spiritual feeling or intellectual understanding. All he has to do is happily accept the cookies, the gift of the kingdom.4

There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though much to create despair. Much, too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous...Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine; she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, any opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her. Too often she betrayed this...Other eyes besides mine watched these manifestations of character--watched them closely, keenly shrewdly. Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity--this guardedness of his--this perfect, clear conciousness of his fair one's defects--this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that ever-toturing pain arose. I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and connecions suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point--this was where the nerve was touched and teased--this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him. If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and have died to them.

Genuine love isn’t blind to defects; it is compassionate towards them and readily sets them within an awareness of a person’s overall qualities and character.

definition of sarcasm is “a cutting, often ironic remark intended to wound,

I accept my body and its defects. I accept my character and its weaknesses. I love myself as a perfect part of a perfect Whole.

I cannot open a flower with a sledgehammer—

Oh, superstition is terrible, terrible! oh, it is the great defect in our Indian character!

To inspire is to lead through a selfless compassionate character, which displays moral integrity as a path for all…

Armed with humility, we who once dreaded change as much as death can learn to face real life with a new courage and hope.

When defects of character are your character, you become a what.

Character is always more caught than taught.

We all know individuals in recovery who have given up the booze or another addiction, yet they are staying dry or abstinent only by redirecting their intense inner misery into the lives of others.

People in grief think a great deal about self-pity. We worry it, dread it, scourge our thinking for signs of it. We fear that our actions will reveal the condition tellingly described as 'dwelling on it.' We understand the aversion most of us have to ‘dwilling on it.’ Visible mourning reminds us of death, which is construed as unnatural, a failure to manage the situation. ‘A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty,’ Philippe Aries wrote to the point of this aversion in Western Attitudes toward Death. ‘But one no longer has the right to say so aloud.’ We remind ourselves repeatedly that our own loss is nothing compared to the loss experienced (or, the even worse thought, not experienced) by he or she who died; this attempt at corrective thinking serves only to plunge us deeper into the self-regarding deep. (Why didn’t I see that, why am I so selfish.) The very language we use when we think about self-pity betrays the deep abhorrence in which we hold it: self-pity is feeling sorry for yourself, self0pity is thumb-sucking, self0pity is boo hoo poor me, self-pity is the condition in which those feeling sorry for themselves indulge, or even wallow. Self-pity remains both the most common and the most universally reviled of our character defects, its pestilential destructiveness accepted as given…In fact the grieving have urgent reasons, even an urgent need, to feel sorry for themselves. Husbands walk out, wives walk out, divorces happen, but these husbands and wives leave behind them webs of intact associations, however acrimonious. Only the survivors of a death are truly left alone.

[O]ne may properly look closely at any proposed new "freedom" from restraint or convention in order to learn what if any personal interest the advocate of the proposal has therein. Personal observation supports the statement that he who speaks for the tearing down of convention and the doing away with restraint may be one who wishes to escape the odium of some defect of his own habit or character, by having everyone else either become as he is or take his point of view.

Without emotional and spiritual recovery, you don’t have much. You have abstinence, and you may not even have that for very long. If you don’t follow the “clear-cut” directions of our Program, you can’t move into receiving God’s directions.

Wallowing in shame, remorse, self-hatred, and guilt over real or imagined failings in our past lives betrays a distrust in the love of God. It shows that we have not accepted the acceptance of Jesus Christ and thus have rejected the total sufficiency of his redeeming work. Preoccupation with our past sins, present weaknesses, and character defects gets our emotions churning in self-destructive ways, closes us within the mighty citadel of self, and preempts the presence of a compassionate God.

Intimacy: May 12 We can let ourselves be close to people. Many of us have deeply ingrained patterns for sabotaging relationships. Some of us may instinctively terminate a relationship once it moves to a certain level of closeness and intimacy. When we start to feel close to someone, we may zero in on one of the person’s character defects, then make it so big it’s all we can see. We may withdraw, or push the person away to create distance. We may start criticizing the other person, a behavior sure to create distance. We may start trying to control the person, a behavior that prevents intimacy. We may tell ourselves we don’t want or need another person, or smother the person with our needs. Sometimes, we defeat ourselves by trying to be close to people who aren’t available for intimacy—people with active addictions, or people who don’t choose to be close to us. Sometimes, we choose people with particular faults so that when it comes time to be close, we have an escape hatch. We’re afraid, and we fear losing ourselves. We’re afraid that closeness means we won’t be able to own our power to take care of ourselves. In recovery, we’re learning that it’s okay to let ourselves be close to people. We’re choosing to relate to safe, healthy people, so closeness is a possibility. Closeness doesn’t mean we have to lose ourselves, or our life. As one man said, we’re learning that we can own our power with people, even when we’re close, even when the other person has something we need.

Lenin, as we have seen, became alarmed about Stalin’s rudeness; his administrative peremptoriness; his Great Russian nationalism; his tendency to give animosity free rein in official conduct; and his lack of tolerance, loyalty, and considerateness toward others. It was a weighty catalogue of politically significant character defects, but not a reasoned analysis. The others, too, even as their horror of Stalin deepened, stood somehow mentally paralyzed before the enigma of the man’s personality.

He wondered why he cared so desperately about the fate of his adopted country and others seemingly so little. "To see the character of the government and the country so sported with, exposed to so indelible a blot, puts my heart to the torture. Am I then more of an American than those who drew their first breath on American ground? Or what is it that thus torments me at a circumstance so calmly viewed by almost everybody else? Am I a fool, a romantic Quixote, or is there a constitutional defect in the American mind? Were it not for yourself and a few others, I . . . would say . . . there is something in our climate which belittles every animal, human or brute. . . . I disclose to you without reserve the state of my mind. It is discontented and gloomy in the extreme. I consider the cause of good government as having been put to an issue and the verdict against it.

She had repaid his kindness with kindness. As she would not have done if she had known who he was. What he was. When defects of character are your character, you become a what. He had noticed this. No one ever says, A liar is who you are, or Who you are is a thief. He was a what, absolutely.

The humble woman is surprised by all the good that she sees around her rather than scandalized by what she cannot judge anyway. The humble woman is grateful for her successes but not disheartened by her failures. She enjoys her gifts and readily admits her mistakes. She maintains a sense of humor, whether the news from Wall Street is giddy or glum. She faces her character defects without getting discouraged. Her humble confidence in God’s love and her enchantment with the kabod Yahweh shape a hedge of thorns against self-absorption and frees her for an unselfconscious presence to others.

She was an ordinary person. But by ‘ordinary’ I just mean that she didn’t have any need to dramatize herself. It’s not a criticism. I don’t think of the urge to perform as something that adds to a person’s character. If anything, it’s a defect, especially when it’s coupled with a need to compete.

fundamental attribution errors,”—a tendency in people to minimize their own errors and attribute them to temporary, fleeting circumstances, but to maximize the errors of others and attribute them to lasting, negative personality traits or character flaws.16 It’s an “I’m okay, but you’re defective” pattern. That’s what happens for unhappy couples.

Remember that we deal with alcohol—cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power—that One is God. May you find Him now! Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The very language we use when we think about self-pity betrays the deep abhorrence in which we hold it: self-pity is feeling sorry for yourself, self-pity is thumb-sucking, self-pity is boo hoo poor me, self-pity is the condition in which those feeling sorry for themselves indulge, or even wallow. Self-pity remains both the most common and the most universally reviled of our character defects, its pestilential destructiveness accepted as given. “Our worst enemy,” Helen Keller called it. I never saw a wild thing / sorry for itself, D. H. Lawrence wrote, in a much-quoted four-line homily that turns out on examination to be free of any but tendentious meaning. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough / without ever having felt sorry for itself.

When I first stopped trying to fix other people, I turned my attention to 'curing' myself. I was in a hurry to get this healing process over. I wanted immediate recovery from the effects of growing up in a family riddled with alcoholism and from being married to an alcoholic. I looked forward to the day I would graduate from Al-Anon and get on with my life. As year two and year three passed, I was still in the program. I began to despair as the character defects I had worked so long to overcome came back to haunt me, particularly during times of stress and during periods when I didn't attend meetings. I have severe arthritis in my joints. To cope with my condition, I have to assess my body each day and patiently respond to its needs. Some days I need a warm bath to get going in the morning. On other days I apply a medicated rub to the painful areas. Yet other days some light stretching and exercise help to loosen me up. I'ave accepted that my arthritis will never go away. It's a condition I manage daily with consistent, on-going care. One day I made a connection between my medical condition and my struggle with recovery. I began to look at myself as having 'arthritis of the personality,' requiring patient, continuous care to keep me from 'stiffening' into old habits and attitudes. This care includes attending meetings, reading Al-Anon literature, calling my sponsor, and engaging in service. Now, as long as I practice patience, recovery is a manageable and adventurous process instead of an arduously sought end point.

Maggie actually forgot that she had any special cause of sadness this morning, as she stood on a chair to look at a remarkable series of pictures representing the Prodigal Son in the costume of Sir Charles Grandison, except that, as might have been expected from his defective moral character, he had not, like that accomplished hero, the taste and strength of mind to dispense with a wig.

It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior. So said the teachers of our childhood; and so say we to the children of the present day. All very judicious and proper, no doubt; but are such assertions supported by actual experience? We are naturally disposed to love what gives us pleasure, and what more pleasing than a beautiful face--when we know no harm of the possessor at least? A little girl loves her bird--Why? Because it lives and feels; because it is helpless and harmless? A toad, likewise, lives and feels, and is equally helpless and harmless; but though she would not hurt a toad, she cannot love it like the bird, with its graceful form, soft feathers, and bright, speaking eyes. If a woman is fair and amiable, she is praised for both qualities, but especially the former, by the bulk of mankind: if, on the other hand, she is disagreeable in person and character, her plainness is commonly inveighed against as her greatest crime, because, to common observers, it gives the greatest offence; while, if she is plain and good, provided she is a person of retired manners and secluded life, no one ever knows of her goodness, except her immediate connections. Others, on the contrary, are disposed to form unfavourable opinions of her mind, and disposition, if it be but to excuse themselves for their instinctive dislike of one so unfavoured by nature; and visa versa with her whose angel form conceals a vicious heart, or sheds a false, deceitful charm over defects and foibles that would not be tolerated in another. They that have beauty, let them be thankful for it, and make a good use of it, like any other talent; they that have it not, let them console themselves, and do the best they can without it: certainly, though liable to be over-estimated, it is a gift of God, and not to be despised.

1. We admitted we were powerless over our emotions, that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to emotionally and mentally ill persons and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

The English themselves hardly conceived that their mind was either economical, sharp, or direct; but the defect that most struck an American was its enormous waste in eccentricity. Americans needed and used their whole energy, and applied it with close economy; but English society was eccentric by law and for sake of the eccentricity itself....Society swarmed with exaggerated characters; it contained little else.

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. This is yet another step which invokes “God” and encourages dependence rather than independence. It echoes the first three steps’ declarations of personal “powerlessness” (first step), personal “[in]sanity” (second step), and the “decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God” (third step). (As an aside, it’s most interesting to speculate how those who chose doorknobs or bedpans as their “Higher Power” “work this step.”)

[Anaïs:] [. . .] Last night I finished reading [Dorothy Brett’s]Brett and Lawrence in a café and the tears were running down my cheeks as I finished. Believe me, Lawrence was much finer, greater than I ever thought. I have seen so much of myself in him, and his battles with Frieda so keenly resemble my battles, and over similar issues, that it gets me. And then his traits of character, many of them are my own—the defects chiefly. The conclusion is that he created a great body of work—and that answers all claims against him.

to every leaf and every flower there is an ideal to which the growth of the plant is constantly urging, so is there an ideal to every human being, a perfect form in which it might appear, were every defect removed and every characteristic excellence stimulated to the highest point. Once, in an age, God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false imagining, an unreal character, but, looking through all the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature, loves, not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be.

When you are rebuilding your life, remember to push forward no matter what. Accept where you are, take responsibility for your actions, and don't let your past decisions keep you from moving forward. Keep yourself focused on your goals, write them down, reflect back, but don't lose sight of where you are going. Avoid gossip, learn to love yourself, work to uncover your character defects, and keep a positive mental attitude. Learn to have discernment when letting people into your life. If anyone keeps you from becoming the best you, then you need to realize that they are not healthy for you in your life. Surround yourself with people, places, and things that are going to help you get better, not drag you down. The people in your life will ultimately affect the direction of your life. Put your trust in God so he can open the doors that you have been closing. Remember that without faith, with your own will, you will never become the person who God has always intended you to be! I can tell you from personal experience that without God, you will never have peace, and without faith, life is unmanageable. There is a better life waiting for you, I encourage you to find it!

I have been reading Bulwer’s novels and Mrs. Trollope’s libels, and Dr. Parr’s works. I am sure you are not an admirer of Mrs. Trollope’s. She has neither the delicacy nor the candour which constitute true nobility of mind and her extent of talent forms but a scanty veil to shadow her other defects. Bulwer has quite delighted me. He has all the dramatic talent which Scott has, and all the passion which Scott has not, and he appears to me to be besides a far profounder discriminator of character. There are very fine things in his ‘Denounced.’ We subscribe to the best library here, but the best is not a good one.

We walked on in silence and then came to a place where several streets met. I stopped at the curb. “Which way do you go?” I inquired. “Your way,’ he smiled. ‘I’m going home.” “I’ll come along with you and smoke a pipe.” “You might wait for an invitation,” I retorted frigidly. “I would if I thought there was any chance of getting one.” “Do you see that wall in front of you?” I said pointing. “Yes.” “In that case, I should have thought you could see also that I don’t want your company.” “I vaguely suspected it, I confess.” I could not help but chuckle. It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike any one who makes me laugh.

PHYSIOLOGY 1. Sex 2. Age 3. Height and weight 4. Color of hair, eyes, skin 5. Posture 6. Appearance: good-looking, over- or underweight, clean, neat, pleasant, untidy. Shape of head, face, limbs. 7. Defects: deformities, abnormalities, birthmarks. Diseases. 8. Heredity SOCIOLOGY 1. Class: lower, middle, upper. 2. Occupation: type of work, hours of work, income, condition of work, union or nonunion, attitude toward organization, suitability for work. 3. Education: amount, kind of schools, marks, favorite subjects, poorest subjects, aptitudes. 4. Home life: parents living, earning power, orphan, parents separated or divorced, parents’ habits, parents’ mental development, parents’ vices, neglect. Character’s marital status. 5. Religion 6. Race, nationality 7. Place in community: leader among friends, clubs, sports. 8. Political affiliations 9. Amusements, hobbies: books, newspapers, magazines he reads. PSYCHOLOGY 1. Sex life, moral standards 2. Personal premise, ambition 3. Frustrations, chief disappointments 4. Temperament: choleric, easygoing, pessimistic, optimistic. 5. Attitude toward life: resigned, militant, defeatist. 6. Complexes: obsessions, inhibitions, superstitions, phobias. 7. Extrovert, introvert, ambivert 8. Abilities: languages, talents. 9. Qualities: imagination, judgment, taste, poise. 10. I.Q.

When a modern woman is blessed with a body that can move, run, dance, play, and bring her to orgasm; with breasts free of cancer, a healthy uterus, a life twice as long as that of the average Victorian woman, long enough to let her express her character on her face; with enough to eat and a metabolism that protects her by laying down flesh where and when she needs it; now that hers is the gift of health and well-being beyond that which any generation of women could have hoped for before—the Age of Surgery undoes her immense good fortune. It breaks down into defective components the gift of her sentient, vital body and the individuality of her face, teaching her to experience her lifelong blessing as a lifelong curse.

If Shakespeare be considered as a MAN born in a rude age and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either from the world or from books, he may be regarded as a prodigy; if represented as a POET capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a refined or intelligent audience, we must abate much of this eulogy. In his compositions, we regret that many irregularities, and even absurdities, should so frequently disfigure the animated and passionated scenes intermixed with them; and, at the same time, we perhaps admire the more those beauties on account of their being surrounded by such deformities. A striking peculiarity of sentiment, adapted to a single character, he frequently hits, as it were, by inspiration; but a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold. Nervous and picturesque expressions as well as descriptions abound in him; but it is in vain we look either for purity or simplicity of diction. His total ignorance of all theatrical art and conduct, however material a defect, yet, as it affects the spectator rather than the reader, we can more easily excuse than that want of taste which often prevails in his productions, and which gives way only by intervals to the irradiations of genius. [....] And there may even remain a suspicion that we overrate, if possible, the greatness of his genius; in the same manner as bodies often appear more gigantic on account of their being disproportioned and misshapen.

Plato is always concerned to advocate views that will make people what he thinks virtuous; he is hardly ever intellectually honest, because he allows himself to judge doctrines by their social consequences. Even about this, he is not honest; he pretends to follow the argument and to be judging by purely theoretical standards, when in fact he is twisting the discussion so as to lead to a virtuous result. He introduced this vice into philosophy, where it has persisted ever since. It was probably largely hostility to the Sophists that gave this character to his dialogues. One of the defects of all philosophers since Plato is that their inquiries into ethics proceed on the assumption that they already know the conclusions to be reached.

hand, everyone knew that sin was evil, and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

Historically, it is traditional and habitual for us to be inadequately prepared. This is the combined result of a number factors, the character of which is only indicated: democracy, which tends to make everyone believe that he knows it all; the preponderance, inherent in democracy, of people whose real interest is in their own welfare as individuals; the glorification of our own victories in war and the corresponding ignorance of our defeats—and disgraces—and of their basic causes; the inability of the average individual to understand the cause and effect not only in foreign but domestic affairs, as well as his lack of interest in such matters. Added to these elements is the manner in which our representative form of government has developed as to put a premium on mediocrity and to emphasize the defects of the electorate already mentioned

Do you know what I did with that broken girl? The one who had been attempting to destroy every single defect of character for as long as she could remember, the one who was already in advanced talks with a God she didn’t believe in to “just take it away,” the one who had no idea of self beyond what was wrapped into the life she thought presented well, men who abused her, friends she didn’t like, and a career that ate her? The one who couldn’t look at herself in a mirror? I started to love her. I began telling her she was okay, that she was loved and that nothing was wrong with her. I told her she wasn’t fucked up beyond repair. I let her know we had lost our way a little bit, that we’d shut some doors along the way, and that I was going to stand next to her while we went around the house and reclaimed those disowned parts. “Especially the ugly ones,” I said.

Nor does the idea of a moral order asserting itself against attack or want of conformity answer in full to our feelings regarding the tragic character. We do not think of Hamlet merely as failing to meet its demand, of Antony as merely sinning against it, or even of Macbeth as simply attacking it. What we feel corresponds quite as much to the idea that they are its parts, expressions, products; that in their defect or evil it is untrue to its soul of goodness, and falls into conflict and collision with itself; that, in making them suffer and waste themselves, it suffers and wastes itself; and that when, to save its life and regain peace from this intestinal struggle, it casts them out, it has lost a part of its own substance – a part more dangerous and unquiet, but far more valuable and nearer to its heart, than that which remains – a Fortinbras, a Malcolm, an Octavius. There is no tragedy in its expulsion of evil: the tragedy is that this involves the waste of good.

Despite all her exaggerations, despite her defects of character, and despite the hopeless confusion of much of her thought, Mary Baker was unquestionably a woman of genius. She discovered (or rediscovered) some of the fundamental laws of the mind, and turned them to account in her practice. The most important of these is the indisputable fact that every imaginative anticipation of a feeling, such as a pain, tends to transform itself into reality, and that therefore a countersuggestion will often remove that dread of illness which is almost as dangerous as illness itself. “The ills we fear are the only ones that conquer us” — behind such words, however much they may lie open to the onslaught of logical criticism, there lurks a profound truth. Mary Baker was anticipating Coué’s doctrine of autosuggestion when she declared: “The sick hurt themselves when they say that they are sick.” She insisted that the Christian Science practitioner should never accept the patient’s conviction of illness.

mistake—could these facts lead to any conclusion other than that they were the desperate emissaries of some body, political or otherwise, who intended to sacrifice themselves, their fellow-passengers, and the ship, in one great holocaust? The whitish granules which I had seen one of them pour into the box formed no doubt a fuse or train for exploding it. I had myself heard a sound come from it which might have emanated from some delicate piece of machinery. But what did they mean by their allusion to to-night? Could it be that they contemplated putting their horrible design into execution on the very first evening of our voyage? The mere thought of it sent a cold shudder over me, and made me for a moment superior even to the agonies of sea-sickness. I have remarked that I am a physical coward. I am a moral one also. It is seldom that the two defects are united to such a degree in the one character. I have known many men who were most sensitive to bodily danger, and yet were distinguished for the independence and strength of their minds. In my own case, however, I regret to say that my quiet and retiring habits had fostered a nervous dread of doing anything remarkable or making myself conspicuous, which exceeded, if possible, my fear of personal peril.

Theme is not imposed on the story but evoke from within it--initally an intuitive but finally an intellectual act on the part of the writer. The writer muses on the story idea to determine what it is in it that has attracted him, why it seems to him worth telling. Having determined that what interests him and what chiefly concerns the major character is the idea of nakedness (physical, psychological, perhaps spiritual), he toys with various ways of telling his story, thinks about what has been said before about nakedness (for instance, in traditional Christianity and pagan myth), broods on every image that occuurs to him, turning it over and over, puzzling on it, hunting for connections, trying to figure out--before he writes, while he writes, and in the process of revisions, what it is he really thinks. (How naked should we be or can we be? Is openness, vulnerability, a virtue or a defect? To what extent, with what important qualifications?) He finds himself bringing in black strippers, perhaps an Indian stripper, supported by imagery that recalls primitive nakedness. And so on. Only when he thinks out his story in this way does he achieve not just an alternative reality or, loosely, an imitation of nature, but true, firm art--fiction as serious thought.

Ere long, however, the daemon was wrestling with him once more; he was seized by that “terrible spirit of unrest” which drove him “like the deluge, to the mountain peaks”. Shadows of gloom and discontent crept into his letters. He began to complain of his “dependent position”, and the forces at work within him soon became obvious. He could not endure regular occupation, could not bear to participate in the daily round of ordinary people. No existence other than that of a poet was acceptable. In this first crisis he probably failed to understand that the trouble sprang from the daemonism within him, from the jealous exclusiveness of the spirit that possessed him, making mundane relationships impossible. He still rationalised the immanent inflammability of his impulses by discovering objective causes for them. He spoke of his pupil’s stubbornness, of defects in the lad’s character which he, as tutor, was impotent to remedy. Hölderlin’s incapacity to meet the demands of everyday life was in this matter all too plain. The boy of nine had a stronger will than the man of twenty-five. The tutor resigned his post. Charlotte von Kalb, who was anything but obtuse, grasped the underlying truth. Wishing to console Johann Christian Friedrich’s mother, she wrote to the latter: “His spirit cannot stoop to these petty labours … or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he takes them too much to heart.

According to this view the present state of our warring capacities would not be a state of culture, but only a stage on the way. Opinions will, of course, be divided about this, for by culture one man will understand a state of collective culture, while another will regard this state merely as civilization8 and will expect of culture the sterner demands of individual development. Schiller is, however, mistaken when he allies himself exclusively with the second standpoint and contrasts our collective culture unfavourably with that of the individual Greek, since he overlooks the defectiveness of the civilization of that time, which makes the unlimited validity of that culture very questionable. Hence no culture is ever really complete, for it always swings towards one side or the other. Sometimes the cultural ideal is extraverted, and the chief value then lies with the object and man’s relation to it: sometimes it is introverted, and the chief value lies with subject and his relation to the idea. In the former case, culture takes on a collective character, in the latter an individual one. It is therefore easy to understand how under the influence of Christianity, whose principle is Christian love (and by counter-association, also its counterpart, the violation of individuality), a collective culture came about in which the individual is liable to be swallowed up because individual values are depreciated on principle. Hence there arose in the age of the German classicists that extraordinary yearning for the ancient world which for them was a symbol of individual culture, and on that account was for the most part very much overvalued and often grossly idealized. Not a few attempts were even made to imitate or recapture the spirit of Greece, attempts which nowadays appear to us somewhat silly, but must none the less be appreciated as forerunners of an individual culture.

Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions. We probably adopt this strategy not so much because of any lack of interest or power but because of a longstanding conviction that for much of human behavior there are no relevant antecedents. The function of the inner man is to provide an explanation which will not be explained in turn. Explanation stops with him. He is not a mediator between past history and current behavior, he is a center from which behavior emanates. He initiates, originates, and creates, and in doing so he remains, as he was for the Greeks, divine. We say that he is autonomous—and, so far as a science of behavior is concerned, that means miraculous. The position is, of course, vulnerable. Autonomous man serves to explain only the things we are not yet able to explain in other ways. His existence depends upon our ignorance, and he naturally loses status as we come to know more about behavior. The task of a scientific analysis is to explain how the behavior of a person as a physical system is related to the conditions under which the human species evolved and the conditions under which the individual lives. Unless there is indeed some capricious or creative intervention, these events must be related, and no intervention is in fact needed. The contingencies of survival responsible for man’s genetic endowment would produce tendencies to act aggressively, not feelings of aggression. The punishment of sexual behavior changes sexual behavior, and any feelings which may arise are at best by-products. Our age is not suffering from anxiety but from the accidents, crimes, wars, and other dangerous and painful things to which people are so often exposed. Young people drop out of school, refuse to get jobs, and associate only with others of their own age not because they feel alienated but because of defective social environments in homes, schools, factories, and elsewhere. We can follow the path taken by physics and biology by turning directly to the relation between behavior and the environment and neglecting supposed mediating states of mind. Physics did not advance by looking more closely at the jubilance of a falling body, or biology by looking at the nature of vital spirits, and we do not need to try to discover what personalities, states of mind, feelings, traits of character, plans, purposes, intentions, or the other perquisites of autonomous man really are in order to get on with a scientific analysis of behavior.

Virtue names the ways good habits become inscribed on our character by steering between excess and defect.

They have gotten down to their own right size. Humility is understanding that they’re worthwhile. It’s the middle ground between the extremes of grandiosity and intense shame.

It is significant that Scripture doesn't cover their defects. The point is not to portray them as superholy luminaries or to elevate them above mere mortals. If that were the aim, there would be no reason to record their character flaws. But instead of whitewashing the blemishes, Scripture seems to make a great deal of their human weaknesses. It's a brilliant reminder that "[our] faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God" (1 Corinthians 2:5).

Choosing to move into willingness and being willing to choose (in other words, being willing to take responsibility) is a positive way of living. It is saying, “Hey, I’m worth moving toward being different without pain and resentments. I value myself and others enough to choose to make changes now rather than wait until I can’t stand not making a choice.” It is a completely different perspective than waiting until it hurts to make choices. The majority of us are very aware of our defects of character, but often it isn’t until we are “sick and tired of being sick and tired” that we become willing to change. Acting “as if” the choice is already made and the changes in our lives are already in place puts the power of our will in line with the power of the universe so that we can move forward more gracefully into living without defects unchecked. Will it work? About as well as we surrender. Will it change our lives? Yes, without question. It is a matter of practice and willingness, of using the Steps we’ve already taken to maintain our commitment. The more willing we become and the more we practice acting “as if,” the more active our surrender becomes and the more we are able to live “as if.” It is a fulfilling and rewarding process. Acting “as if” can raise questions of genuineness and authenticity. Is there a conflict with the person I am choosing to become and the person I currently am?

Recorded in the history of human suffering are cancers of such malignant character that even minor contact aggravates them, engendering overwhelming pain. How often, in the midst of modern civilizations have I wanted to bring you into the discussion, sometimes to recall these memories, sometimes to compare you to other countries, so often that your beloved image became to me like a social cancer. Therefore, because I desire your good health, which is indeed all of ours, and because I seek better stewardship for you, I will do with you what the ancients did with their infirmed: they placed them on the steps of their temples so that each in his own way could invoke a divinity that might offer a cure. With that in mind, I will try to reproduce your current condition faithfully, without prejudice; I will life the veil hiding your ills, and sacrifice everything to truth, even my own pride, since, as your son, I, too, suffer your defects and shortcomings.

Preoccupation with our past sins, present weaknesses, and character defects gets our emotions churning in self-destructive ways, closes us within the mighty citadel of self, and preempts the presence of a compassionate God.

wrote out a sort of biography of each of his characters, and everything that they had done and that had happened to them up to the opening of the story. He had their dossier, as the French say….With this material in his hand he was able to proceed; the story lay all in the question, What shall I make them do?…But, as he said, the defect of his manner and the reproach that was made him was his want of “architecture”—in other words, of composition….If one reads Turgenev’s stories with the knowledge that they were composed—or rather that they came into being—in this way, one can trace the process in every line.

Try to work on being okay with being a total reject, a freak, a wobbly little weirdo, a loser, a fine-ass hottie, and an ordinary everyday girl with all kinds of struggles. It’s okay. Try to remind yourself, every single day, that it’s you who decides if you’re happy or not, the real you, the current you, not the past you. And your happiness should definitely not be up to everybody else in this goddamn shitty, fucked-up world. Remember that things are always changing. Remember that love, even if it goes bad in the end, was still a good thing, because it came from you, out of who you are as a person. Remember that the good times, when they happen, are worth all the trouble. Remember that sadness and heartbreak, frustration and loss, even bitter, hopeless fucking tragedy, they’re all part of what makes a beautiful story. Just like flaws, freakiness, fuck-ups, and all your fallible character defects are all part of what makes a fantastic fucking you. Remember that making mistakes doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a human being, somebody who’s just trying to get through this fucked up life, just like everybody else, and doesn’t know everything. Sometimes you screw up. Sometimes a fuck up ruins lives. But you’re only a bad person if you don’t learn anything from your mistakes, if you just keep going, like a bull in a China shop, hurting people over and over forever, never changing. Remember that you can still love yourself, even if you’ve made horrible, terrible mistakes, even if you’ve ruined people’s lives. You can still love who you are. You have to, or you won’t survive. Remember that the awful things people did to you do not define who you are. Your choices define who you are, and you never chose any of that shit. Remember that you’re not all alone in being a freak. Remember that you fucking rock.

Time to Defect (The Sonnet) It's time to defect, my friend - from the side of passport to the side of heartport, from the side of prison to the side of reason, from the side of nationality to the side of sanity, from the side of myopia to the side of motion, from the side of crutches to the side of conscience, from the side of coffins to the side of character, from the side of bombs to the side of backbone, from the side of barbwire to the side of brainwire, from the side of flag to the side of fervor, from the side of parasites to the side of paragons, from the side of pacemakers to the side of peacemakers, from the side of ideology to the side of illumination. It's time to defect, my friend - from the side of caves to the side of kind, from the side of tribe to the side of life.

The fact that we’re still left hanging on in saṁsāra after this long, long time is all because of our character habits we keep falling off the path all the time. It’s because of our habit of finding excuses for ourselves that we aren’t willing to follow the path set out by the Buddha. What sort of path has he set out for our actions? What sort has he set out for our words? For our mind? He set out standards for us to respect, to obey, to put into practice. Sages have said that the Buddha’s path is an easy one to follow correctly, for it creates no dangers. It doesn’t require that we do anything hurtful or hard. We have to examine the Buddha’s teachings to see if they’re worthy of obedience or not, to see if they’re worthy to be followed or not. Do they have any defects that we should try to avoid, that we shouldn’t accept? Can we find any inconsistencies in the Buddha that would justify our giving more credence to our own opinions, that would justify our disobeying his teachings? And what do we have that’s so special? When you look carefully, you can’t find anything to fault him with.

those self-defeating, learned behaviors or character defects that result in a diminished capacity to initiate or to participate in loving relationships.

Self-will had been my Higher Power for a lifetime.

If you would be a saint in heaven you must first be a saint on earth. The traits of character you cherish in life will not be changed by death or by the resurrection. You will come up from the grave with the same disposition you manifested in your home and in society. Jesus does not change the character at His coming. The work of transformation must be done now. Our daily lives are determining our destiny. Defects of character must be repented of and overcome through the grace of Christ, and a symmetrical character must be formed while in this probationary state, that we may be fitted for the mansions above.—

The first act is awareness, second is acceptance, then third is surrender (action).

When the Five Whys approach goes awry, I call it the Five Blames. Instead of asking why repeatedly in an attempt to understand what went wrong, frustrated teammates start pointing fingers at each other, trying to decide who is at fault. Instead of using the Five Whys to find and fix problems, managers and employees can fall into the trap of using the Five Blames as a means for venting their frustrations and calling out colleagues for systemic failures. Although it’s human nature to assume that when we see a mistake, it’s due to defects in someone else’s department, knowledge, or character, the goal of the Five Whys is to help us see the objective truth that chronic problems are caused by bad process, not bad people, and remedy them accordingly.

Personality tendencies and talents should be accepted, but character defects should always be challenged. God loves you as you are—but he loves you too much to let you stay that way.

If I had written King Lear, I would be plagued by remorse for the rest of my life. For the sheer greatness of this work grossly magnifies its defects, its monstrous defects, the tiniest things that stand between certain scenes andbtheir possible perfection. It’s not the sun marred by spots; it’s a broken Greek statue. All that has ever been done is ridden with errors, faulty perspectives, ignorance, signs of bad taste, shortcomings and oversights. To write a masterpiece large enough to be great and perfect enough to be sublime is a task no one has had the fortune or divine capacity to accomplish. Whatever can’t be done in a single burst suffers from the unevenness of our spirit. This thought causes my imagination to be overwhelmed by regret, by a painful certainty that I’ll never be able to do anything good and useful for Beauty. The only method for achieving Perfection is to be God. Our greatest effort takes time; the time it takes passes through various stages of our soul, and each stage of the soul, being unlike any other, taints the character of the work with its own personality. All we can be certain of when we write is that we write badly; the only great and perfect works are the ones we never dream of realizing.

Booker T. Washington wrote that "character, not circumstances", makes the person. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character." While character makes for a good story or poem, in reality we are less shaped by character traits than we think, and more than we realize by the circumstances that life deals us - and our responses to those circumstances.

Another way we can gain some knowledge of our fear and anger is by noticing our habitual holding spots, or where in our body we hold our stress. We each hold emotions in different places of our bodies. “It was like being kicked in the guts!” “It knocked the wind right out of me.” “I feel rubber kneed.” “I’m stiff as a board.” “My stomach is on fire.” “My neck is so stiff that I can’t turn my head.” All these statements are about physical symptoms of emotional states. Not too many of us take the time to make the connections and to correct the underlying causes.

You're a very wholesome man. That is your virtue and your defect. You have a wholesome character, and you want all of life to be made up of wholesome phenomena, but that doesn't happen. So you despise the activity of public service because you want things to always correspond to their aim, and that doesn't happen. You also want the activity of the individual man always to have an aim, that love and family life always be one. And that doesn't happen. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

Now the wrath of God is as much a Divine perfection as is His faithfulness, power, or mercy. It must be so, for there is no blemish whatever, not the slightest defect in the character of God; yet there would be if “wrath” were absent from Him!

God give me the courage and strength to know who I really am, to act accordingly in my life, and to refrain from diverting

Travel is often a petri dish for both our character defects and our finer qualities, and in this moment my baser attributes had me in their clutches.

We might think that with fewer problems and more time to ponder deep truths, we could better develop our spiritual side. But it is precisely through dealing with life's problems and pressures that our character defects are exposed and eventually, through much effort, refined.

You can not shed your past mistakes, albeit, they are in self-denial to your present sentient, but they made you who you are and what you have become

Pages might be written to prove, from this illustrious example, the defects of human excellence; to show how easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage, to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy.

I found that people with addictions weren’t driven only by drugs. Moreover, they weren’t any more antisocial or criminal than people I’d grown up with, many of whom rarely or never got high; in fact, their behavior wasn’t much different from what I’d engaged in myself with my friends back home. They didn’t seem overwhelmed by craving: they basically sought drug rewards in the same way that they sought sex or food. I began to see that their drug-related behavior wasn’t really that special and to think that perhaps their drive to take drugs obeyed the same rules that applied to these other human desires. The notion that addiction was some kind of “character defect” or extreme condition that created completely unpredictable and irrational actions began to seem misguided.

Are we independent of our character defects? Are we making the decision, or is greed making the decision? Are we making the decision, or is pride making the decision? Am I making this decision freely, or is lust influencing me? Am I not, in fact, being jerked around by all my character defects, even when I’m sober? Am I in a constant state of frustration and anger, restless, irritable, discontent, sober? I’m being yanked around by all these forces—my life is a mess with all of this freedom! What am I going to do about that?

Nothing of that tongue survived into my generation but a few insults: Yiddish can describe defects of character with the precision that Inuit describes ice or Japanese rain.

, conscious, and subconscious level. Goals give our life direction. What would you like to have happen in your life this year? What would you like to do, to accomplish? What good would you like to attract into your life? What particular areas of growth would you like to have happen to you? What blocks, or character defects, would you like to have removed? What would you like to attain? Little things and big things? Where would you like to go? What would you like to have happen in friendship and love? What would you like to have happen in your family life? Remember, we aren’t controlling others with our goals—we are trying to give direction to our life. What problems would you like to see solved? What decisions would you like to make? What would you like to happen in your career? What would you like to see happen inside and around you? Write it down. Take a piece of paper, a few hours of your time, and write it all down—as an affirmation

Defects of empirical knowledge have less to do with the ways we go wrong in philosophy than defects of character do: such things as the simple inability to shut up; determination to be thought deep; hunger for power; fear, especially the fear of an indifferent universe

It is not too much to say that, in light of advancing science, many of the infirmities that beset us, whether of heart, intellect or temper, are the results of defective education. ... The principle which underlies the possibility of all education is discovered to us: we are taught that the human frame, brain as well as muscle, grows to the uses it is earliest put to. ... We find that we can work definitely towards the formation of character; that the habits of the good life, of the alert intelligence ... are somehow related in the very distance of his brain. Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life. ... education is a life; all life must have its appropriate nourishment ... the spiritual life is nourished by ideas; and it is the parent's duty to sustain a child's inner life with ideas as they sustain the body with food.

My experience with age is that it instills a degree of patience in some, leaves the virtuous spiritually unchanged, feeds the character defects in others, and brings little wisdom to any of us.

The principles of Twelve Step recovery are the opposite of our character defects.” In recovery, we try to take the opposite of our character defects and shortcomings and turn them into principles. For example, we work to change fear into faith, hate into love, egoism into humility, anxiety and worry into serenity, complacency into action, denial into acceptance, jealousy into trust, fantasy into reality, selfishness into service, resentment into forgiveness, judgmentalism into tolerance, despair into hope, self-hate into self-respect, and loneliness into fellowship.

Clothes do not make the man, and boys are apt to overlook certain superficial peculiarities and defects which seem more significant to their elders. In Sam Bumpus they saw only a man of good humor and wonderful wisdom, a man whose manner of life was vastly more interesting than that of the common run of people, whose knowledge of the lore of woods and fields, of dogs and hunting, entitled him to a high place in their estimation. They overlooked the externals, the evidence of poverty and shiftlessness, his lack of education, and saw only his native wit and shrewdness, his kinship with the world of nature, and his goodness of heart.

When you’re born a loser, your goal is to survive, not thrive. You learn to lie, to cheat, to do what it takes to fit in. You may become a survivor, but it’s a miserable existence. Just like the cockroaches I was assigned to kill, you find yourself scurrying in from the shadows to claim the bare necessities while hiding your true self from the light at all costs. Born losers are the ultimate cockroaches. We do what we have to, and that attitude often enables some pretty severe character defects.

In addition to responsibility, Alcoholics Anonymous emphasizes “rigorous honesty” as a central precept of its philosophy, and these ideas go together. The fourth of AA’s 12 Steps requires members to take a “searching and fearless moral inventory,” in which the individual considers his or her character defects and how they have contributed to a problem.

it’s a point of pride whenever you can point to the ways in which you’re avoiding your progenitor’s defective character. I’m not like him becomes your mantra,

So I started trying to behave as if my defects of character were gone. I considered how I would behave if I were who I wanted to be, and I acted that way to the best of my poor acting ability. I made lots of mistakes along the way, but I began to improve with time. It was hard.

I can now admit that most of my troubles stem from one large and glaring defect: self-centeredness. For how can I wallow in self-pity, weep over resentments, be sick with righteous anger, ache with envy, and tense up with fears and anxieties unless all my thoughts are exclusively on poor me?

I gathered that, instead of fighting mightily against a defect, I also had to let go of it. Just simply open my hands, my heart, and my mind and say to my Higher Power, “Here it is, this defect. I give it to You. Please remove it from me.

Use prayer to ask for awareness and willingness to receive. Use prayer to ask for depth and clarity. Use prayer to ask to become a better channel for our Higher Power. Use prayer to ask for ease and grace in surrender. Use prayer to ask how to pray. Use prayer to ask how to think and act. Use prayer to say thank you. Use prayer. Prayer can be considered cheating because of how much easier it makes the process go.

The “quantum theory” came into being as an effort to cure the wave theory of light of these defects. It has been completely successful. It has shewn that Newton was not wholly wrong in regarding light as corpuscular, for it has proved that a beam of light may be regarded as broken up into discrete units, called “light-quanta” or “photons,” with almost the definiteness with which a shower of rain may be broken up into drops of water, a shower of bullets into separate pieces of lead, or a gas into separate molecules. At the same time, the light does not lose its undulatory character. Each little parcel of light has a definite quantity, of the nature of a length, associated with it. We call this its “wave-length,” because when the light in question is passed through a prism, it behaves exactly as waves of this particular length of wave would do. Light of long wavelength is made up of small parcels, and vice-versa, the amount of energy in each parcel being inversely proportional to this wave-length, so that we can always calculate the energy of a photon from its wave-length, and vice-versa.

I now know that if I don’t want to live in a mess, I need to pray to God for the willingness, courage, and motivation to clean up my own mess.

believe we get active with Step Six when we get sick and tired of being sick—sick and tired of the character defects of which alcoholism is a symptom, sick and tired of their effect, not on our past, but on our present lives.

Dear Sir, I am writing to inform you of the whereabouts of a certain book which frequently doubles as a bird. I understand you are concerned about it, and no wonder! Such a large volume containing so much knowledge. In fact, I believe it is actually several volumes in one, due to the rather impressive appetite of said bird in devouring many of its comrades. Perhaps you will recall that I left your home without a word of good-bye, and for this you must pardon my poor manners. I find myself averse to being trapped in doorless rooms, to say nothing of being methodically tortured. It is a character defect owning to my savage ancestry. To atone, I have entrusted the book into the care of your friend Lord Ackerly. He assures me that he will keep the volume perfectly safe, so long as I myself remain unmolested and left entirely to my own devices. To this end, he has worked a magical connection that will destroy the book should I meet harm at your lordship's hands, or anyone working on behalf of your lordship, as your lordship's time is precious and sometimes these things must be delegated. Looking forward to never meeting again, Jessamin Olea

The principles of Twelve Step recovery are the opposite of our character defects.

We are taught desire rather than deserve. Just because we want it must mean we are able to get it, right?

We must learn to be selective and to work for what we want. Sow the seeds, and the plants will grow. The more seeds we plant, the more will grow . . . given proper nurturing, care, sunlight, water, and soil. But we only have time to plant so many seeds. And God plays a part in the weather and soil. Just as in the Sixth and Seventh Steps, God’s part is as important as our part. We must do the work. God provides the environment and opportunity—and the power, direction, willingness, and the teachers.

When anger takes over, it acts with uncontrollable rage. We say things, feel things, and do things way out of proportion. Anger is emotional drunkenness.

Our life now means something and counts for things that are good.

Today, I understand envy as the incredible sadness that overwhelmed me when others were successful. I was hypercritical and insanely jealous of the “greats,” never once looking at the time, energy, and work they put into their success. I simply resented their “good luck,” “connections,” or “secret

Impulsive, sensation-seeking, and incapable of experiencing empathy or guilt, a narcissistic psychopath treats other people as objects of need fulfillment and wish fulfillment. This makes it easy for him to use and abuse them, in his personal relationships and in large-scale actions, without compunction. His lack of conscience renders him blind to higher human values, which allows him to disregard them entirely or treat them instrumentally as means to his ends, the same way he treats people. This dangerous character defect, however, serves him well in the pursuit of power, money, and adulation. Not having the inhibitions and scruples imposed by empathy and conscience, he can easily lie, cheat, manipulate, destroy, and kill if he wants to—or, when powerful enough, order others to do it for him.

Dishonest thinking, prejudice, ego, antagonism toward anyone and everyone who dares to cross him, vanity, and a critical attitude are character defects that gradually creep in and become a part of his life. Living with fear and tension inevitably results in wanting to ease that tension, which alcohol seems to do temporarily.

Pride and ingratitude are my biggest character defects. Pride is that hardened part in my mind that needs to be softened by humility and a sense of humor. Making a gratitude list is essential to my daily recovery. I frequently include what I did right each day in my gratitude lists; I believe my focus determines what I become.

If you’re not a good cook by the time you’re our age it’s a serious character defect, and it means something bad, something ungenerous, about your personality. Sorry to break the news.

Many self-mutilators, as well as anorexics and bulimics, come from families where physical appearance and prowess were stressed more than feelings and thoughts. Eating disorders are particularly rampant among female athletes, dancers, models, and others from whom approval is explicitly tied to their body. Like self-mutilators, anorexics and bulimics tend to be perfectionists who never feel good enough, despite their considerable achievements. Often they are the "good little girl"—the perfect, straight-A student, the quiet, conscientious one who never gave here parents any trouble—an identity they strenuously cling to in order to avoid conflict and abuse. But beneath the mask, they feel loathsome and defective, anything but special. They develop a rigidity of character and a right-or-wrong style of thinking that makes them acutely sensitive to criticism. Everything is either black or white, good or bad, success or failure, fat or thin. There is no in-between, no comfort in just being adequate.

We both approach the world as economists, and as economists resigned to - and sometimes even reveling in - the character defect that diverts us from pure science to policy analysis. An economist who has abandoned his resistance to policy analysis is liable to fall prey to even more seductive and dangerous vice of policy formulation.

The remedy for fear is faith, for faith means courage.

courage is fear that has said its prayers.

there is no scientifically justifiable reason—or evidence—to assume that the obese are any more defective in character or behavior

influence on the development of AA was substantial. As Bill Wilson wrote in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, “The important thing is this: the early A.A. got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgment of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Groups.

What disturbed me the most was that the Clintons were trying to change the very structure of the Secret Service. The Clintons mandated change upon their arrival in 1993 that exacerbated the defects within the SS and in particular accelerated the friction between the special agents (the suits) and the UD. Hillary’s ambition—given her deep-seated dislike of the uniformed military and of uniformed law enforcement—was to get rid of the UD that she so loathed.

MSB: La Rochefoucauld says that Cardinal de Retz (whom he didn't like) looked upon Pascal as a great rival. RG: The cardinal didn't have Pascal's genius, but he did have the human experience that Pascal lacked as both a very sick and a very lonely man. Montaigne, on the other hand, was too happy, too untroubled. Montaigne really prefigures the French bourgeois who has tasted success—the rat in his cheese, as one might say. MSB: You consider Montaigne's carefree spirit as a form of social blindness. Do you see a comparable danger in the determination to experience love as the only thing, the last thing possible in life? One finds this determination embodied, for example, by Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot. RG: Prince Myshkin is an ambiguous, ambivalent character, and to consider him as truly good, as many people do, is an error. Looking at Dostoevsky's notebooks for The Idiot, we see that Prince Myshkin, just like Stavrogin in The Demons, is the hypostasis of a person who has no desire. The absence of desire is Stavrogin's weakness, his suicidal side. He makes all sorts of attempts to arouse in others the desire, the mimetic desire, that he doesn't have. This is very clear in the duels: he always wins, because he never loses his nerve. Myshkin's attitude is much the same, I believe. Dostoevsky himself, confronted with a personality that was stronger than his own, wondered if it was the result of an excess of desire, or of a total absence of it. His notebooks make it clear that Stavrogin and Myshkin are monstrous figures who lack the same thing. Like Stavrogin, Myshkin has a negative effect on people around him—General Ivolgin, for example. Women fall in love with him because he has no mimetic desire. They are therefore his victims, although Myshkin himself seems not to understand what is going on. Isn't this precisely because he is unacquainted with mimetic desire? It seems to be a kind of physical defect, almost a biological deficiency. Otherwise, Myshkin must be regarded as a kind of Buddhist. One character in The Idiot wonders whether Myshkin isn't carrying out a deliberate strategy. His attitude may well be entirely calculating, who knows? Dostoevsky himself, it seems to me, hadn't answered these questions in his own mind. MSB

Authenticity is being true to a vision and purpose. We are authentic when we choose to act and feel and choose to behave in balance with the higher values and principles we’ve chosen for our lives. If those principles and values are not fully in place and manifested, it doesn’t make us phony. It makes us human. If we feel the conflict between who we are and who we would become, it is good. It signals that we understand the difference between reality and fantasy and are moving toward reality.

BEWARE OF THE LEAST LIKELY TEMPTATION “Joab had defected to Adonijah, though he had not defected to Absalom.” 1 Kings 2:28     Joab withstood the greatest test of his life, remaining absolutely loyal to David by not turning to follow after the fascinating and ambitious Absalom. Yet toward the end of his life he turned to follow after the weak and cowardly Adonijah. Always remain alert to the fact that where one person has turned back is exactly where anyone may be tempted to turn back (see 1 Corinthians 10:11–13). You may have just victoriously gone through a great crisis, but now be alert about the things that may appear to be the least likely to tempt you. Beware of thinking that the areas of your life where you have experienced victory in the past are now the least likely to cause you to stumble and fall.     We are apt to say, “It is not at all likely that having been through the greatest crisis of my life I would now turn back to the things of the world.” Do not try to predict where the temptation will come; it is the least likely thing that is the real danger. It is in the aftermath of a great spiritual event that the least likely things begin to have an effect. They may not be forceful and dominant, but they are there. And if you are not careful to be forewarned, they will trip you. You have remained true to God under great and intense trials—now beware of the undercurrent. Do not be abnormally examining your inner self, looking forward with dread, but stay alert; keep your memory sharp before God. Unguarded strength is actually a double weakness, because that is where the least likely temptations will be effective in sapping strength. The Bible characters stumbled over their strong points, never their weak ones.     “. . . kept by the power of God . . .”—that is the only safety (1 Peter 1:5).

The obstacle to achieving such vocational diversification and general aptitude does not lie in the human character as such, but rather in the mass of qualifying educational and vocational restrictions imposed by every privileged group in order to maintain its special status, emoluments, and perquisites. Though the reputed object of these regulations is often laudable, as measures to ensure competence and protect members from unqualified rivals, the underlying aim is to prevent fresh activities and organizations from arising in competition with the power system. As a result, the scope of human initiative through direct action becomes limited: today the smallest new measure must run a gauntlet of licensing laws, professional codes, trades union regulations, wage schedules, promotion priorities, bureaucratic restrictions and inspections. Even the exigencies of war were only partly able to break down or bypass these barriers-for where are they more deeply entrenched than in the military machine itself? This explains, perhaps, why there is so little prospect of overcoming the defects of the power system by any attack that employs mass organizations and mass efforts at persuasion; for these mass methods support the very system they attack. The changes that have so far been effective, and that give promise of further success, are those that have been initiated by animated individual minds, small groups, and local communities nibbling at the edges of the power structure by breaking routines and defying regulations. Such an attack seeks, not to capture the citadel of power, but to withdraw from it and quietly paralyze it. Once such initiatives become widespread, as they at last show signs of becoming, it will restore power and confident authority to its proper source: the human personality and the small face-to-face community.

Angry tears stung her eyes. Tension built and boiled inside her. Her cheeks grew hot with suppressed anger, her movements became jerky and abrupt. She shoved an errant strand of hair out of her face, stormed to the washstand — And collided with her husband. He had been coming toward her with a piece of wet linen and a bowl half-filled with water. As he and Juliet bounced off each other, some of the water spilled onto the carpet, the rest down the front of his waistcoat. Ignoring it, Gareth held out the damp rag like a truce offering. "Here." "What's that for?" "She needs washing, doesn't she?" "What do you know about babies?" "Come now, Juliet. I am not entirely lacking in common sense." "I wonder," she muttered, spitefully. He summoned a polite though confused smile — and that only stoked Juliet's temper all the more. She did not want him to be such a gentleman, damn it!  She wanted a good, out-and-out row with him. She wanted to tell him just what she thought of him, of his reckless spending, of his carefree attitude toward serious matters. Oh, why hadn't she married someone like Charles — someone capable, competent, and mature? "What is wrong, Juliet?" "Everything!" she fumed. She plunged the linen in the bowl of water and began swabbing Charlotte's bottom. "I think Perry was right. We should go straight back to your brother, the duke." "You should not listen to Perry." "Why not? He's got more sense than you and the rest of your friends combined. We haven't even been married a day, and already it's obvious that you're hopelessly out of your element. You have no idea what to do with a wife and daughter. You have no idea where to go, how to support us — nothing. Yet you had to come charging after us, the noble rescuer who just had to save the day. I'll bet you didn't give any thought at all to what to do with us afterward, did you? Oh!  Do you always act before thinking? Do you?" He looked at her for a moment, brows raised, stunned by the force of her attack. Then he said dryly, "My dear, if you'll recall, that particular character defect saved your life. Not to mention the lives of the other people on that stagecoach." "So it did, but it's not going to feed us or find us a place to live!"  She lifted Charlotte's bottom, pinned a clean napkin around the baby's hips, and soaped and rinsed her hands. "I still cannot believe how much money you tossed away on a marriage license, no, a bribe, this morning, nor how annoyed you still seem to be that we didn't waste God-knows-how-much on a hotel tonight. You seem to have no concept of money's value, and at the rate you're going, we're going to have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the local parish or go begging in the street just to put food in our bellies!" "Don't be ridiculous. That would never happen." "Why wouldn't it?" "Juliet, my brother is the Duke of Blackheath. My family is one of the oldest and richest in all of England. We are not going to starve, I can assure you." "What do you plan to do, then, work for a living? Get those pampered, lily-white hands of yours dirty and calloused?

Blast it, Silverton, just look at the collection of suitors she’s got trailing after her, especially Broadmore.” Nigel gloomily watched the broad-shouldered Corinthian sweep Amelia gracefully down the room. “What girl wouldn’t want to be romanced by someone who looks like bloody Prince Charming?” Silverton frowned. “And you’re what? The frog on the lily pad?” “Hardly, but I can’t compete with Broadmore. He’s got every girl in town half in love with him already. Why not Amelia?” “Because Broadmore’s an arrogant ass. Do you really want Miss Easton spending the rest of her life with him? You’d be doing the poor girl a service by stealing him a march.” Nigel had never looked at it that way before. Broadmore was an arrogant ass, one who had a great deal more bottom than brains. Not that Amelia seemed to think so. As she and Broadmore spun past him, her light-hearted laugh drifted behind her, shimmering like fairy dust in the air. “I see your point,” Nigel replied. “But Amelia doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by Broadmore’s character defects.” He tried to ignore the way his heart twisted into a hard knot at the thought of Amelia married to another man. Silverton

it’s human nature to assume that when we see a mistake, it’s due to defects in someone else’s department, knowledge, or character,

Version Two-Morning (Engage in your beginning ritual if you are using one.) THIS MORNING I ADMIT WHEN ISOLATED I AM POWERLESS OVER (Fill in problem). (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I ADMIT WHEN I RELY ONLY ON MY WILL MY LIFE IS UNMANAGEABLE. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I BELIEVE THERE IS A POWER GREATER THAN MYSELF. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I BELIEVE THIS POWER CAN, AND WILL, RESTORE ME TO SANITY. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I AM MAKING A DECISION TO TURN MY WILL OVER TO THAT POWER’S CARE. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I AM MAKING A DECISION TO TURN MY LIFE OVER TO THAT POWER’S CARE. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I AM ENTIRELY READY TO HAVE THAT POWER REMOVE ALL MY DEFECTS OF CHARACTER. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I HUMBLY ASK THAT POWER TO REMOVE MY SHORTCOMINGS. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I AM SEEKING THROUGH THIS PRAYER TO IMPROVE MY CONSCIOUS CONTACT WITH THAT SPIRITUAL POWER. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I AM PRAYING FOR KNOWLEDGE OF THAT SPIRITUAL POWER’S WILL FOR ME. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I AM PRAYING FOR THE POWER TO CARRY OUT THAT SPIRITUAL POWER’S WILL FOR ME. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I AM PRAYING FOR THE WILLINGNESS TO TAKE THE ACTION NECESSARY TO CARRY OUT THAT SPIRITUAL POWER’S WILL FOR ME. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I AM PRAYING FOR A SPIRITUAL AWAKENING. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I AM PRAYING FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO CARRY THIS MESSAGE TO OTHERS WHO STILL SUFFER. (BREATHE) THIS MORNING I AM PRAYING FOR THE ABILITY AND WILLINGNESS TO PRACTICE THESE PRINCIPLES IN ALL ASPECTS OF MY LIFE. (Engage in your ending ritual if you are using one.) Version Two-Evening (Engage in your beginning ritual if you are using one.) TONIGHT I ADMIT IN ISOLATION I AM POWERLESS OVER (Fill in problem)-THAT MY LIFE IS UNMANAGEABLE. (BREATHE) TONIGHT I BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE A POWER GREATER THAN MYSELF AND YOU ARE RESTORING ME TO SANITY. (BREATHE) TONIGHT I AM GRATEFUL THIS DAY I WAS ABLE TO MAKE A DECISION TO TURN MY WILL AND MY LIFE OVER TO YOUR CARE. (BREATHE) TONIGHT I CONTINUE TO BE ENTIRELY WILLING TO HAVE YOU REMOVE ALL MY DEFECTS OF CHARACTER. (BREATHE) TONIGHT I HUMBLY ASK YOU TO CONTINUE TO REMOVE MY SHORTCOMINGS. (BREATHE) TONIGHT I TAKE PERSONAL INVENTORY AND FIND I HAVE BEEN WRONG AND NOW PROMPTLY ADMIT IT TO YOU. (If after an honest review of the day you are unable to identify anyone you have harmed, skip the next two sentences.) (BREATHE) TONIGHT I LIST THESE PERSONS I HAVE HARMED TODAY, AND AM WILLING TO MAKE AMENDS TO THEM ALL. (BREATHE) TONIGHT I AGREE TO MAKE DIRECT AMENDS TO THESE PEOPLE WHEREVER POSSIBLE, EXCEPT WHEN TO DO SO WOULD INJURE THEM OR OTHERS. (BREATHE) TONIGHT I AM SEEKING THROUGH PRAYER TO IMPROVE MY CONSCIOUS CONTACT WITH YOU. (BREATHE) TONIGHT I AM PRAYING FOR KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR WILL FOR ME. (BREATHE) TONIGHT I AM PRAYING FOR THE POWER TO CARRY OUT YOUR WILL FOR ME. (BREATHE) TONIGHT I AM PRAYING FOR THE WILLINGNESS TO CARRY OUT YOUR WILL FOR ME. (BREATHE) TONIGHT I AM SEEKING THROUGH MEDITATION TO IMPROVE MY CONSCIOUS CONTACT WITH YOU. (BREATHE) TODAY I EXPERIENCED A SPIRITUAL AWAKENING AS A RESULT OF THESE STEPS. (BREATHE) TODAY I TRIED TO CARRY THIS MESSAGE TO OTHERS WHO STILL SUFFER. (BREATHE) TODAY I PRACTICED THESE PRINCIPLES IN ALL MY AFFAIRS. (Engage in your beginning ritual if you are using one.)

My Creator––I am now willing that you should have all of me––good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character that stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. A-Ho!  3 STEP

have supplied the foundation for recovery. The next two Steps begin the active, day-to-day solution, removing what blocks us from our usefulness to other people and to our Higher Power, and especially (and ultimately) what blocks us from ourselves.