Good Character Trait Quotes

This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression. The character has traits of myself. I really lost friends while writing on that story, I became ugly and unhappy and just yelled at people. The cruel thing with depression is that it's such a self-centered illness - Dostoevsky shows that pretty good in his "Notes from Underground". The depression is painful, you're sapped/consumed by yourself; the worse the depression, the more you just think about yourself and the stranger and repellent you appear to others.

The common mistake that bullies make is assuming that because someone is nice that he or she is weak. Those traits have nothing to do with each other. In fact, it takes considerable strength and character to be a good person.

It is not until you change your identity to match your life blueprint that you will understand why everything in the past never worked.

Live your life in such a way that you'll be remembered for your kindness, compassion, fairness, character, benevolence, and a force for good who had much respect for life, in general.

I have one outstanding trait in my character, which must strike anyone who knows me for any length of time, and that is my knowledge of myself. I can watch myself and my actions, just like an outsider. The Anne of every day I can face entirely without prejudice, without making excuses for her, and watch what's good and what's bad about her. This 'self-consciousness' haunts me, and every time I open my mouth I know as soon as I've spoken whether 'that ought to have been different' or 'that was right as it was.' There are so many things about myself that I condemn; I couldn't begin to name them all. I understand more and more how true Daddy's words were when he said: 'All children must look after their own upbringing.' Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

We must learn and then teach our children that niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning. Like rapport-building, charm and the deceptive smile, unsolicited niceness often has a discoverable motive.

Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.

We must learn and then teach our children that niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning.

We sometimes hurt those we love because they need to be “taught a lesson,” when we really want to punish. We were depressed and complained we felt bad, when in fact we were mainly asking for sympathy and attention. This odd trait of mind and emotion, this perverse wish to hide a bad motive underneath a good one, permeates human affairs from top to bottom. This subtle and elusive kind of self-righteousness can underlie the smallest act or thought. Learning daily to spot, admit, and correct these flaws is the essence of character-building and good living. An honest regret for harms done, a genuine gratitude for blessings received, and a willingness to try for better things tomorrow will be the permanent assets we shall seek.

When you have deep friendships with good people, you copy and then absorb some of their best traits. When you love a person deeply, you want to serve them and earn their regard. When you experience great art, you widen your repertoire of emotions. Through devotion to some cause, you elevate your desires and organize your energies.

Focus on your work. Do what you're great at. Don't compare yourself to others and or waste time criticizing the lives and work of others. Do what matters most to you and make a difference doing that.

Entrepreneurship is about acquiring skills, beliefs, and character traits. To advance, I find that we must determine which skills, beliefs, and character traits we lack. Most times, we simply need to improve.

These times, indeed all times, demand national political leaders who know not only our history but the history of the world and its nations and peoples. We need leaders of principle, courage, character, wisdom, and discipline; and yet we seem trapped by a system of choosing our presidents that pushes those who possess those traits aside in favor of others who look good on television, are skilled at slandering and demonizing their opponents in a campaign, and are able to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars required to ensure election at any cost.

Begin with the end in mind,” says Stephen Covey in his best-selling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Beginning with the end in mind is a trait of people who do well. It is also a trait of people who parent well. When we understand that a major goal of parents is to develop a person of good character, we have gotten closer to that goal.

I've no personality,' I would tell myself. My curiosity embraced everything; I believed in an absolute truth, in the need for moral law; my thoughts adapted themselves to their objects; if occasionally one of them took me by surprise, it was because it reflected something that was surprising. I preferred good to evil and despised that which should be despised. I could find no trace of my own subjectivity. I had wanted myself to be boundless, and I had become as shapeless as the infinite. The paradox was that I became aware of this deficiency at the very moment when I discovered my individuality; my universal aspiration had seemed to me until then to exist in its own right; but now it had become a character trait: 'Simone is interested in everything.' I found myself limited by my refusal to be limited.

niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning. Like rapport-building, charm and the deceptive smile, unsolicited niceness often has a discoverable motive.

He’d learned a long time ago never to trust someone without a sense of humor. Over the years Beckham had grown to know many men in his career that lacked this trait. He’d found it was a good way to judge character.

To summarize, then, our three requirements for a good theory of assholes are as follows. We are looking for (1) a stable trait of character, (2) that leads a person to impose only small or moderate material costs upon others, (3) but that nevertheless qualifies the person as morally repugnant.

Whether someone is the ‘right person’ has more to do with character traits and innate capabilities than with specific knowledge, background or skills.

I regularly tell our seminary students that if I happen to visit the church in which one of them serves, I will not ask first, “Is this man a good preacher?” Rather, first of all I will ask the secretaries, office staff, janitors, and cleaners what it is like to work for this pastor. I will ask, “What kind of man is he? Is he a servant? Is he demanding and harsh, or his he patient, kind, and forbearing as a man in authority?” One of our graduates may preach great sermons, but if he is a pain to work for, then you know he will cause major problems in any congregation. Leaders in the church are required by Scripture to set an example in the areas of love, kindness, gentleness, patience, and forbearance before they are appointed to preach, teach, and rule. If we obediently require these attitudes and character traits of our leaders, what will our “new community” look like

In many ways, gratitude is the most important of all the good character traits. It is the most indispensable trait to both happiness and goodness. One can neither be a happy person nor a good person without gratitude. The less gratitude one has, the more one sees oneself as a victim; and nothing is more likely to produce a bad person or a bad group than defining oneself or one’s group as a victim. Victims, having been hurt, too often believe they have a license to hurt others. As for happiness, if you think of all the people you know, you will not be able to name one who is ungrateful and happy. The two are mutually exclusive.

The second trait of narcissism in which asceticism plays a role is blankness. “If only I could feel”—in this formula the self-denial and self-absorption reach a perverse fulfillment. Nothing is real if I cannot feel it, but I can feel nothing. The defense against there being something real outside the self is perfected, because, since I am blank, nothing outside me is alive. In therapy the patient reproaches himself for an inability to care, and yet this reproach, seemingly so laden with self-disgust, is really an accusation against the outside. For the real formula is, nothing suffices to make me feel. Under cover of blankness, there is the more childish plaint that nothing can make me feel if I don’t want to, and hidden in the characters of those who truly suffer because they go blank faced with a person or activity they always thought they had desired, there is the secret, unrecognized conviction that other people, or other things as they are, will never be good enough.

Any gloss on authors, their character traits or biographies, hides the fact that only bad writing has an author, good writing does not.

We need leaders of principle, courage, character, wisdom, and discipline, and yet we seem trapped by a system of choosing our presidents that pushes those who possess those traits aside in favor of others who look good on television, are skilled at slandering and demonizing their opponents in a campaign, and are able to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars required to ensure election at any cost.

Loving your enemy. Doing good things for evil people. Never taking vengeance. Responding to violence with nonviolent love—even if it brings suffering. These are not options, but the primary character traits of those who claim to follow a crucified God.

Bree Bonchay, author of I Am Free, explains that we relate to our toxic family members as if they are normal healthy people who possess a conscience, self-awareness, and a sense of integrity. Because of this inherent trust in them, we believe their words. We know that we don’t lie or manipulate so we believe our toxic family members would never lie to or manipulate us. We give them the benefit of the doubt because we believe they genuinely love us. Because we believe they truly love us, we cannot believe they could ever or would ever do anything to intentionally hurt us. When we believe in this way, we are essentially projecting our own good qualities or character traits onto the toxic family members we love. So when they don’t respond in the ways that a loving, kind, healthy person would, we are left feeling hurt and confused and questioning ourselves, believing we must somehow be to blame for their lack of love and understanding.

Having come to a sound egoistic decision by the help of the unconscious, a man proceeds to invent, or adopt from others, a set of high-sounding phrases showing how he is pursuing the public good at immense personal sacrifice. Anybody who believes that these phrases give his real reasons must suppose him quite incapable of judging evidence, since the supposed public good is not going to result from his action. In this case a man appears less rational than he is; what is still more curious, the irrational part of him is conscious and the rational part unconscious. It is this trait in our characters that has made the English and Americans so successful.

Today, think about the character traits of Jesus that resonate most deeply with you (especially those that seem lacking in the world), and realize that these are what you are invited to birth into the world: compassion, forgiveness, courage, honesty. Let goodness form within you today, and find a way to release it into the world.

The behaviour of the individual capitalist does not depend on 'the good or ill will of the individual' because 'free competition brings out the inherent laws of capitalist production, in the shape of external coercive laws having power over every individual capitalist' (Capital, vol. 1, p. 270). In so far as individuals adopt the role of capitalist, they are forced to internalize the profit-seeking motive as part of their subjective being. Avarice and greed, and the predilections of the miser, find scope for expression in such a context, but capitalism is not founded on such character traits — competition imposes them willy-nilly on the unfortunate participants.

We must learn and then teach our children that niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning. Like rapport-building, charm and the deceptive smile, unsolicited niceness often has a discoverable motive. Kelly

Whoever is in charge of such things had been sparing with his blessings on the moment Benno was born. He had neither looks nor wit nor skill. He was not large or strong, he could not sing; in fact, he had a stammer, which on most occasions left him self-consciously mute. One gift only had been given, a gift as simple as it is rare: the gift of pure goodness. He knew, unerringly, what was right, what was kind, what would make people happy, and he did it without fail. His goodness took no effort; there was no internal scale to be balanced. He hoped for no reward and feared no hell. He was not clever- in his final year of school before the teachers despaired of him, he was asked how he would equitably divide a half-pound loaf of bread among himself and two friends. He said he would go without and his two friends would each have a quarter pound, and neither threats of failure nor the switch could persuade him to change his answer.

People who create successful strategic relationships demonstrate 10 essential character traits:    1. Authentic. They are genuine, honest, and transparent. They are cognizant of (and willing to admit to) their strengths and weaknesses.    2. Trustworthy. They build relationships on mutual trust. They have a good reputation based on real results. They have integrity: their word is their bond. People must know, like, and trust you before sharing their valuable social capital.    3. Respectful. They are appreciative of the time and efforts of others. They treat subordinates with the same level of respect as they do supervisors.    4. Caring. They like to help others succeed. They’re a source of mutual support and encouragement. They pay attention to the feelings of others and have good hearts.    5. Listening. They ask good questions, and they are eager to learn about others—what’s important to them, what they’re working on, what they’re looking for, and what they need—so they can be of help.    6. Engaged. They are active participants in life. They are interesting and passionate about what they do. They are solution minded, and they have great “gut” instincts.    7. Patient. They recognize that relationships need to be cultivated over time. They invest time in maintaining their relationships with others.    8. Intelligent. They are intelligent in the help they offer. They pass along opportunities at every chance possible, and they make thoughtful, useful introductions. They’re not ego driven. They don’t criticize others or burn bridges in relationships.    9. Sociable. They are nice, likeable, and helpful. They enjoy being with people, and they are happy to connect with others from all walks of life, social strata, political persuasions, religions, and diverse backgrounds. They are sources of positive energy.   10. Connected. They are part of their own network of excellent strategic relationships.

The king sighed. What I didn’t know then was that the princess rarely took an interest in, or asked for, anything. When she did, her requests carried more power. It’s a good approach to life, generally gets one what one wants. (So long as one doesn’t want too often.) I would come to appreciate this character trait over the course of my association with Princess Goob, for all too often we fairies are on the receiving end of demanding humans. Take Cinderella for example – with her gown, and her coach, and her glass slippers, and on and on. I mean, really! But I digress.

We judge ourselves by our intentions but others by their actions. We tend to think other people's mistakes are caused by character flaws while our mistakes are due to situational factors. "I had a headache on the day of the examine, but he's not very smart." Then we have the opposite. Our good behavior is attributable to fundamental traits while other people's is temporary and situational. "I'm returning this wallet to lost and found because I'm a moral and ethical person. Others do so only if they're seen picking it up." Thus we own our strengths and disavow our weaknesses. This is a big obstetrical to overcoming self-destruction behavior, it justifies all our attempts to deny or put off our need to change and rationalizes the consequences of our actions.

HAPPINESS: "Flourishing is a fact, not a feeling. We flourish when we grow and thrive. We flourish when we exercise our powers. We flourish when we become what we are capable of becoming...Flourishing is rooted in action..."happiness is a kind of working of the soul in the way of perfect excellence"...a flourishing life is a life lived along lines of excellence...Flourishing is a condition that is created by the choices we make in the world we live in...Flourishing is not a virtue, but a condition; not a character trait, but a result. We need virtue to flourish, but virtue isn't enough. To create a flourishing life, we need both virtue and the conditions in which virtue can flourish...Resilience is a virtue required for flourishing, bur being resilient will not guarantee that we will flourish. Unfairness, injustice, and bad fortune will snuff our promising lives. Unasked-for pain will still come our way...We can build resilience and shape the world we live in. We can't rebuild the world...three primary kinds of happiness: the happiness of pleasure, the happiness of grace, and happiness of excellence...people who are flourishing usually have all three kinds of happiness in their lives...Aristotle understood: pushing ourselves to grow, to get better, to dive deeper is at the heart of happiness...This is the happiness that goes hand in hand with excellence, with pursuing worthy goals, with growing mastery...It is about the exercise of powers. The most common mistake people make in thinking about the happiness of excellence is to focus on moments of achievement. They imagine the mountain climber on the summit. That's part of the happiness of excellence, and a very real part. What counts more, though, is not the happiness of being there, but the happiness of getting there. A mountain climber heads for the summit, and joy meets her along the way. You head for the bottom of the ocean, and joy meets you on the way down...you create joy along the way...the concept of flow, the kind of happiness that comes when we lose ourselves through complete absorption in a rewarding task...the idea of flow..."Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times...The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limit in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."...Joy, like sweat, is usually a byproduct of your activity, not your aim...A focus on happiness will not lead to excellence. A focus on excellence will, over time, lead to happiness. The pursuit of excellence leads to growth, mastery, and achievement. None of these are sufficient for happiness, yet all of them are necessary...the pull of purpose, the desire to feel "needed in this world" - however we fulfill that desire - is a very powerful force in a human life...recognize that the drive to live well and purposefully isn't some grim, ugly, teeth-gritting duty. On the contrary: "it's a very good feeling." It is really is happiness...Pleasures can never make up for an absence of purposeful work and meaningful relationships. Pleasures will never make you whole...Real happiness comes from working together, hurting together, fighting together, surviving together, mourning together. It is the essence of the happiness of excellence...The happiness of pleasure can't provide purpose; it can't substitute for the happiness of excellence. The challenge for the veteran - and for anyone suddenly deprived of purpose - is not simple to overcome trauma, but to rebuild meaning. The only way out is through suffering to strength. Through hardship to healing. And the longer we wait, the less life we have to live...We are meant to have worthy work to do. If we aren't allowed to struggle for something worthwhile, we'll never grow in resilience, and we'll never experience complete happiness.

Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm—to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. The price must be paid and the process followed. You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut. This principle is also true, ultimately, in human behavior, in human relationships. They, too, are natural systems based on the law of the harvest. In the short run, in an artificial social system such as school, you may be able to get by if you learn how to manipulate the man-made rules, to “play the game.” In most one-shot or short-lived human interactions, you can use the Personality Ethic to get by and to make favorable impressions through charm and skill and pretending to be interested in other people’s hobbies. You can pick up quick, easy techniques that may work in short-term situations. But secondary traits alone have no permanent worth in long-term relationships. Eventually, if there isn’t deep integrity and fundamental character strength, the challenges of life will cause true motives to surface and human relationship failure will replace short-term success. Many people with secondary greatness—that is, social recognition for their talents—lack primary greatness or goodness in their character. Sooner or later, you’ll see this in every long-term relationship they have, whether it is with a business associate, a spouse, a friend, or a teenage child going through an identity crisis. It is character that communicates most eloquently. As Emerson once put it, “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.” There are, of course, situations where people have character strength but they lack communication skills, and that undoubtedly affects the quality of relationships as well. But the effects are still secondary. In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. We all know it. There are people we trust absolutely because we know their character. Whether they’re eloquent or not, whether they have the human relations techniques or not, we trust them, and we work successfully with them. In the words of William George Jordan, “Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil—the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.

Even harder to solve is the translation of ‘virtù’, together with a number of other words that cluster round it. It would be so easy to write the English cognate ‘virtue’, meaning the opposite of vice, but this is not what Machiavelli was talking about. He was not interested in the polarity ‘good’/‘evil’, but in winning and losing, strength and weakness, success and failure. For Machiavelli ‘virtù’ was any quality of character that enabled you to take political power or to hold on to it; in short, a winning trait. It could be courage in battle, or strength of personality, or political cunning, or it might even be the kind of ruthless cruelty that lets your subjects know you mean business. But one can hardly write ‘cunning’ or ‘cruelty’ for ‘virtù’, even if one knows that in this context that is what the text means; because then you would lose the sense that although Machiavelli is not talking about the moral virtues he nevertheless wants to give a positive connotation to the particular qualities he is talking about: this cruelty is aimed at solving problems, retaining power, keeping a state strong, hence, in this context it is a ‘virtù’. Ugly though it may sound, then, I have sometimes been obliged to translate ‘virtù’ as ‘positive qualities’ or ‘strength of character’, except of course on those occasions - because there are some - when Machiavelli does mean ‘virtues’ in the moral sense: in which case he’s usually talking about the importance of faking them even if you may not have them

Since I did Selection all those years ago, not much has really changed. The MOD (Ministry of Defence) website still states that 21 SAS soldiers need the following character traits: “Physically and mentally robust. Self-confident. Self-disciplined. Able to work alone. Able to assimilate information and new skills.” It makes me smile now to read those words. As Selection had progressed, those traits had been stamped into my being, and then during the three years I served with my squadron they became molded into my psyche. They are the same qualities I still value today. The details of the jobs I did once I passed Selection aren’t for sharing publicly, but they included some of the most extraordinary training that any man can be lucky enough to receive. I went on to be trained in demolitions, air and maritime insertions, foreign weapons, jungle survival, trauma medicine, Arabic, signals, high-speed and evasive driving, winter warfare, as well as “escape and evasion” survival for behind enemy lines. I went through an even more in-depth capture initiation program as part of becoming a combat-survival instructor, which was much longer and more intense than the hell we endured on Selection. We became proficient in covert night parachuting and unarmed combat, among many other skills--and along the way we had a whole host of misadventures. But what do I remember and value most? For me, it is the camaraderie, and the friendships--and of course Trucker, who is still one of my best friends on the planet. Some bonds are unbreakable. I will never forget the long yomps, the specialist training, and of course a particular mountain in the Brecon Beacons. But above all, I feel a quiet pride that for the rest of my days I can look myself in the mirror and know that once upon a time I was good enough. Good enough to call myself a member of the SAS. Some things don’t have a price tag.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments. Undignified as such a treatment may seem to some of my colleagues, I shall have to take account of this clash and explain a good many of the divergencies of philosophers by it. Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries when philosophizing to sink the fact of his temperament. Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making for a more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the universe that does suit it. He feels men of opposite temper to be out of key with the world's character, and in his heart considers them incompetent and 'not in it,' in the philosophic business, even tho they may far excel him in dialectical ability....But the one thing that has COUNTED so far in philosophy is that a man should see things, see them straight in his own peculiar way, and be dissatisfied with any opposite way of seeing them. There is no reason to suppose that this strong temperamental vision is from now onward to count no longer in the history of man's beliefs. .... Rationalism usually considers itself more religious than empiricism, but there is much to say about this claim, so I merely mention it. It is a true claim when the individual rationalist is what is called a man of feeling, and when the individual empiricist prides himself on being hard-headed. In that case the rationalist will usually also be in favor of what is called free-will, and the empiricist will be a fatalist—I use the terms most popularly current. The rationalist finally will be of dogmatic temper in his affirmations, while the empiricist may be more sceptical and open to discussion. I will write these traits down in two columns. I think you will practically recognize the two types of mental make-up that I mean if I head the columns by the titles 'tender-minded' and 'tough-minded' respectively. THE TENDER-MINDED Rationalistic (going by 'principles'), Intellectualistic, Idealistic, Optimistic, Religious, Free-willist, Monistic, Dogmatical. THE TOUGH-MINDED Empiricist (going by 'facts'), Sensationalistic, Materialistic, Pessimistic, Irreligious, Fatalistic, Pluralistic, Sceptical.

A good economic system should therefore also have the property of producing “good human beings.” In this respect, capitalism is not considered to be a good economic system by many of its critics, according to whom capitalism promotes human character traits that are incompatible with leading a good life.

Intellectual Fascism – 1/3 If fascism is defined as the arbitrary belief that individuals possessing certain traits (such as those who are white, Aryan, or male) are intrinsically superior to individuals possessing certain other traits (such as those who are black, Jewish, or female), and that therefore the "superior" individuals should have distinct politico-social privileges, then the vast majority of (American) liberals and so called antifascists are actually intellectual fascists. In fact, the more politico-economically liberal our citizens are, the more intellectually fascistic they often tend to be. Intellectual fascism - in accordance with the above definition - is the arbitrary belief that individuals possessing certain traits (such as those who are intelligent, cultured, artistic, creative, or achieving) are intrinsically superior to individuals possessing certain other traits (such as those who are stupid, uncultured, unartistic, uncreative, or unachieving). The reason why the belief of the intellectual fascist, like that of the politico-social fascist, is arbitrary is simple: there is no objective evidence to support it. At bottom, it is based on value judgements or prejudices which are definitional in character and are not empirically validatable, nor is it falsifiable. It is a value chosen by a group of prejudiced people - and not necessarily by a majority. This is not to deny that verifiable differences exist among various individuals. They certainly do. Blacks, in some ways, are different from whites; short people do differ from tall ones; stupid individuals can be separated from bright ones. Anyone who denies this, whatever his or her good intentions, is simply not accepting reality. Human differences, moreover, usually have their distinct advantages. Under tropical conditions, the darkly pigmented blacks seem to fare better than do the lightly pigmented whites. At the same time, many blacks and fewer whites become afflicted with sickle-cell anaemia. When it comes to playing basketball, tall men are generally superior to short ones. But as jockeys and coxswains, the undersized have their day. For designing and operating electric computers, a plethora of gray matter is a vital necessity; for driving a car for long distances, it is likely to prove a real handicap. Let us face the fact, then, that under certain conditions some human traits are more advantageous - or "better" - than some other traits. Whether we approve the fact or not, they are. All people, in today's world, may be created free, but they certainly are not created equal. Granting that this is so, the important question is: Does the possession of a specific advantageous endowment make an individual a better human? Or more concretely: Does the fact that someone is an excellent athlete, artist, author, or achiever make him or her a better person? Consciously or unconsciously, both the "politico-social" and the "intellectual fascist" say yes to these questions. This is gruesomely clear when we consider politico-social or lower-order fascists. For they honestly and openly not only tell themselves and the world that being white, Aryan, or male, or a member of the state-supported party is a grand and glorious thing; but, simultaneously, they just as honestly and openly admit that they despise, loathe, consider as scum of the earth individuals who are not so fortunate as to be in these select categories. Lower-order fascists at least have the conscious courage of their own convictions. Not so, alas, intellectual or higher-order fascists. For they almost invariably pride themselves on their liberality, humanitarianism, and lack of arbitrary prejudice against certain classes of people. But underneath, just because they have no insight into their fascistic beliefs, they are often more vicious, in their social effects, than their lower-order counterparts.

they cannot learn the essential character traits that make them right for your organization.

Most people crumble when squeezed, but the champion feeds off it. If I had to pick just one great trait to have in the wild, it would be this: calm in the storm. Develop this trait, even if you don’t feel it naturally applies to you. Embrace the dramas whenever you can - in order to practise! Tell yourself: ‘I am good in the crisis, I am calm in the storm.’ Tell yourself this until it becomes your reality.

Character traits are longer-lasting and are something on which a good marriage can be built. Respect and affection can grow in a marriage if husband and wife like and respect each other.

Our sexually selected instincts for displaying sympathy tend to affect our belief systems, not just our charity and courtship behavior. When individuals espouse ideological positions, we typically interpret their beliefs as signs of good or bad moral character. Individuals feel social pressure to adopt the beliefs that are conventionally accepted as indicating a "good heart," even when those beliefs are not rational. We may even find ourselves saying, "His ideas may be right, but his heart is clearly not in the right place." Political correctness is one outcome of such attributions. For example, if a scientist says, "I have evidence that human intelligence is genetically heritable," that is usually misinterpreted as proclaiming, "I am a disagreeable psychopath unworthy of love." The arbiters of ideological correctness can create the impression that belief A must indicate personality trait X. If X is considered sexually and socially repulsive, then belief A becomes taboo. In this way our sexually selected instincts for moralistic self-advertisement become subverted into ideological dogmas. I think that human rationality consists largely of separating intellectual argument from personality attributions about moral character. Our difficulty in making this separation suggests that political, religious, and pseudo-scientific ideologies have been part of moralistic self-display for a very long time.

In one study, researchers asked hundreds of middle school students to rank the values their parents prioritized. Half of the values centered on achievement, such as attending a good college, excelling academically, and having a successful career. The other half focused on character traits, such as being respectful, helpful, and kind. Adolescents who reported that their parents valued character traits as much as or more than their performance exhibited greater mental health, enjoyed higher levels of achievement, and engaged in less rule-breaking behavior than peers who believed their parents were primarily focused on how they were performing

A good basic character should be developed even before discussing enlightenment or the growth of your soul. That’s why Zen initiates developed their basic character traits through nine years of study—three years of cleaning, three years of firewood collecting and cutting, and three years of cooking. Teachings on the Tao were transmitted only to those who had successfully cultivated such character in themselves.

Now, I have used the word “struggle” and “fight” in the previous passages. But it’s a mistake to think that the moral struggle against internal weakness is a struggle the way a war is a struggle or the way a boxing match is a struggle—filled with clash of arms and violence and aggression. Moral realists sometimes do hard things, like standing firm against evil and imposing intense self-discipline on their desires. But character is built not only through austerity and hardship. It is also built sweetly through love and pleasure. When you have deep friendships with good people, you copy and then absorb some of their best traits. When you love a person deeply, you want to serve them and

The disparity, however, between the rewards offered in the labor market and the vital interest to have good dependency care makes it clear that market forces have not been relied upon to supply adequate dependency work. Indeed, a clear-eyed look at the nearly universal twin features of female caregiving and female subordination indicates: 1) that a certain class of persons has been subjected to and socialized to develop the character traits and the volitional structure needed for dependency work; 2) that certain sexual behaviors commensurate with forming attachments, being submissive to another's will, and so forth have been made compulsory for women; and 3) that poor women and women of color have been forced into paid employment as dependency workers by the scanty financial resources and limited employment opportunities available to them, and middle-class women have been forced out of paid employment not commensurate with their (largely unpaid) duties as dependency workers. It has not merely “happened” that women have consistently “chosen” to make dependency relations and dependency work central to their vision of the good life, while men have chosen a wider variety of options.

Character name: Creighton Dian-Cecht Race: Trisian Age: 27 Class: Druid Talent: Healer Level 117 (28,482,031  XP to next level) Health: 4404 (1512) Mana: 7533 (1726) Stamina: 2704 (1260) Armor: 1,246 (14.4% damage reduction) – 22% damage mitigation with skills Strength: 16 Intelligence: 47 Wisdom: 50 Constitution: 30 Agility: 10 Luck:  14 Alignment: Lawful good (+14) Racial Traits: None Profession: Grandmaster Herbalist Company: Green Shroud Company

I was also really fortunate at Eton to have had a fantastic housemaster, and so much of people’s experience of Eton rests on whether they had a housemaster who rocked or bombed. I got lucky. The relationship with your housemaster is the equivalent to that with a headmasterat a smaller school. He is the one who supervises all you do, from games to your choice of General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), and without doubt he is the teacher who gets to know you the best--the good and the bad. In short, they are the person who runs the show. Mr. Quibell was old-school and a real character--but two traits made him great: he was fair and he cared. And as a teenager those two qualities really matter to one’s self-esteem. But, boy, did he also get grief from us. Mr. Quibell disliked two things: pizzas and the town of Slough. Often, as a practical joke, we would order a load of Slough’s finest pizzas to be delivered to his private door; but never just one or two pizzas--I am talking thirty of them. As the delivery guy turned up we would all be hidden, peeping out of the windows, watching the look of both horror, then anger, as Mr. Quibell would send the poor delivery man packing, with firm instructions never to return. The joke worked twice, but soon the pizza company got savvy.

To give one example, consumerism and juvenilization reinforce one another. People who know who they are, who think carefully about purchases, and who exercise self-control are harder to persuade to buy products they don't really need. In contrast, impulsive people who are searching for a sense of identity, who are looking to salve their emotional pain, who desperately crave the approval of others, and who have lots of discretionary income (or are willing to spend as if they do) make ideal consumers. In other words, encouraging people to settle into some of the worst traits of adolescence is good for business. Not all businesses and advertisers operate on this basis, but enough do to encourage the cult of youth and discourage people from growing up. Considerable evidence suggests that consumers can see through these techniques and resist them to some extent. But immersed as we all are in the culture of adolescence, it becomes increasingly hard to embrace the self-denial and character formation necessary to achieve what used to be called mature adulthood.2

This is a law of the universe. Frustration and painful moments of discipline help a child learn to delay gratification, one of the most important character traits a person can have. If you are able to hold the limit and empathize with the pain, then character (the “harvest of righteousness”) will develop. But if you don’t, you will have the same battle tomorrow: “A hot-tempered man must pay the penalty; if you rescue him, you will have to do it again” (Proverbs 19:19). If you rescue your children from their anger at your boundary, you can plan on more anger at later limits. Remember, their protest or pain does not determine what is good.

I built an idea in my head of the hero I wanted to be, a grab bag of traits from heroes, villains, and side characters. I did not have book role models, I had book blueprints. But there remained a huge gap between the person I wanted to be and the person who I was. This was because no matter how many book blueprints I had, as much as I wanted to make myself the hero of my own life, it didn’t matter as long as I kept telling the story wrong. Nowadays, as a storyteller, I know what the problem was. I had all the elements I needed to tell a good story. But I was telling it the wrong way, so I could never get to the ending I wanted. If you tell yourself you’re a winner, you know what kind of story you’re telling, and you will march toward that... Likewise, if you tell yourself you’re a loser, you’ve made that your story, and you will march toward that instead. The same setbacks could happen in the loser’s story as in the winner’s story, but the self-defined loser would let them be proof that they were never going to be anything. Here’s the story I was telling myself back when I was little edible child waiting to be carried away by hawks and making OCD rituals for herself: once upon a time, there was a girl who was afraid of everything. When I was 16, I realized that I knew what this story looked like and how it ended, and it wasn’t the life I wanted for myself. If I wanted my ending to look different, I needed to change the kind of story I was telling about myself. I needed to shape my events into a different genre: once upon a time, there was a woman who was afraid of nothing. At age 16, I legally changed my name from my birthname — Heidi — to one I thought sounded like the hero I wanted to be: Maggie. And I vowed that I would never be afraid of anything ever again. Did it work? No, of course not. Not right away. But it became a mission statement, my hero’s journey.

general, a hopeful optimistic nature, and dedication and commitment to being problem solving and solutions oriented is a good character trait, and is one that will serve you well throughout your life. Except in interactions with the destructive and the disordered. In those cases your stubbornness, dedication, hopefulness, optimism, and your commitment to finding solutions will be turned against you, and it will eventually cause you to implode in a most spectacularly devastating and destructive manner.

The rabbis applied the name of Antonius to all nonhostile Roman emperors; Antonius’ major character trait was that he had the good sense to converse with the rabbinic masters and to learn from them.

Attitude is a character-trait (mindset) that can be good, bad or neutral. In fact, our attitudes can be shaped by our environment, religious beliefs, parental upbringing and social norms.

We like to present a particular appearance to the world, one that highlights our strengths. When in love, however, opposite traits often come to the fore. A person who is normally strong and independent can suddenly become rather helpless, dependent, and hysterical. A nurturing, empathetic person can suddenly become tyrannical, demanding, and self-absorbed. As adults we feel relatively mature and practical, but in love we can suddenly regress to behavior that can only be seen as childish. We experience fears and insecurities that are greatly exaggerated. We feel terror at the thought of being abandoned, like a baby who has been left alone for a few minutes. We have wild mood swings—from love to hate, from trust to paranoia. Normally we like to imagine that we are good judges of other people’s character. Once infatuated or in love, however, we mistake the narcissist for a genius, the suffocator for a nurturer, the slacker for the exciting rebel, the control freak for the protector. Others can often see the truth and try to disabuse us of our fantasies, but we won’t listen. And what is worse, we will often continue to make the same types of mistaken judgments again and again.

Maturity is choosing to walk in godly character traits that are not natural to your personality.

Curiously, people usually resist their good qualities even more emphatically than they resist facing their negative qualities. There may be a character in your dream who behaves in a noble and courageous way. Since that inner person is part of you, its qualities are also yours. So long as you are facing your negative and immature traits squarely, you also have a duty to acknowledge the fine qualities in yourself, and to live them consciously.

Personality is not the clothes you wear but the mind you carry, the kindness you have inside, owning a soft clean good heart, pious intentions, excellent calm nature, and a genuinely good soul from within is a proper definition of personality

Results of a recent survey of 74 chief executive officers indicate that there may be a link between childhood pet ownership and future career success. Fully 94% of the CEOs, all of them employed within Fortune 500 companies, had possessed a dog, a cat, or both, as youngsters. The respondents asserted that pet ownership had helped them to develop many of the positive character traits that make them good managers today, including responsibility, empathy, respect for other living beings, generosity, and good communication skills. For all we know, more than 94% of children raised in the backgrounds from which chief executives come had pets, in which case the direction of dependency would be negative. Maybe executive success is really related to tooth brushing during childhood. Probably all chief executives brushed their teeth, at least occasionally, and we might imagine the self-discipline thus acquired led to their business success. That seems more reasonable than the speculation that “communication skills” gained through interacting with a childhood pet promote better relationships with other executives and employees.

Thus, "Whatever happens, however tragic and horrible it seems to us, serves the greater good, or God wouldn't let it happen" — a very popular idea, especially among those who have endured terrible grief — may serve a therapeutic function for those in great emotional pain, but also, alas, it contains the classic trait of purely meaningless speech. No possible evidence could refute it, since evidence falls into the category of "how things seem to us," and the statement refuses to address that category. "You create your own reality" has the same irrefutable and untestable character, and hence also fits the class of meaningless speech, or Stirner's "spooks" (or Nietzsche's "swindles" or Korzybski's "noises").

The word cartoon had lost it’s meaning over the years, and some kid’s shows had far too much adult content or they simply didn’t teach good values. It was hard enough raising a child and trying to instill morally sound character traits without having to compete with the media sources using bad behavior as entertainment.

There was a point in his life where he—for lack of a better word—fell into himself. Became could be that better word lacking. Became is a good word. He believed that everybody had a character, a self that they would inevitably become. Years go by, we trudge along, and we collect pieces of ourselves, traits and beliefs, habits and opinions, compulsions and decisions, until we are.

I also want to point out—and this is much more distressing—that the only people I saw complaining were White. I posted the Smithsonian’s image on my Facebook page, where I expected many of my 250 Black friends would express their outrage. Only one commented. I called Ibou in Senegal. I told him the source of the poster and explained why it was a big deal. I said, “I’m just going to read it to you, from top to bottom. Without comment. Just listen.” So I read it to him: “To be White is to be logical. To be White is to believe in hard work. To be White is to be rational.” When I was done, he just said, “Then I guess I’m White.” He went on to say the people who wrote it are inhuman because these are the things that it takes to be a well-rounded human being. These are the character traits that everyone needs to succeed in life and to lead a good, honorable life.

It’s a good character trait, don’t get me wrong—no one has a bad word to say about Max—but I’m just not sure I could date someone like him. I’d rather be one in a million than one of a million.

My capacity for self-deception didn’t begin with the first wisps of gray. As the Roman philosopher Cicero noted, many of the deficiencies we blame on old age are really failings of character. Old age does not produce new personality traits so much as it amplifies existing ones. As we age, we become more intensely ourselves. Usually, not in a good way.

All close relationships hurt, because no perfect people live on the earth. But the safe people are the wise ones that can hear their sin and respond to our hurt. In short, they can “own” where they are wrong. If, however, someone has the character trait of defensiveness, when we need to confront him, we are going to be stuck with all the hurt that his natural imperfections cause in the relationship. Someone who does not own his need to change does not change, and the hurt is likely to continue.

We must learn and then teach our children that niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction, it is not a character trait. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning, like rapport building, charm, and the deceptive smile, unsolicited niceness often has a discoverable motive.

Kids lie for a few main reasons. First, the line between fantasy and reality is murkier for them than it is for adults. Kids frequently engage in pretend play, where they aren’t constrained by the laws of reality and they enter into different worlds and take on traits of different characters. I’m a big fan of pretend play. It’s where children can express and explore the issues they struggle with, because it’s a safe world within their control. But when you ask your child if she broke the lamp, knowing full well that she was the one who tipped it over, and she says, “No, I was playing in my room,” your child may be coping with her guilt, or her fear of disappointing or enraging you in that moment, by entering into fantasy. We can look at this in two ways: that a child is “avoiding telling the truth” or that telling the truth feels so hard and scary that she slips into a world of pretend where she has control and can dictate an ending that feels better to her.

1.​Identify the messages that are being presented. They all have one or more. (Except maybe that song about there being millions of peaches… I think those dudes were just high.) 2.​Along with your kids, identify which values the creators are elevating. (Freedom? Autonomy? Sex? Drugs? Pride?) Which values are they demeaning? (Humility? Responsibility? Traditional gender roles?) 3.​Try to piece together the worldview behind the message. What do you think the artist’s definition of good and bad is? What about moral and immoral? What is the good life—the life that reflects success (according to their art or writing)? Is it money? Lots of romantic relationships? Freedom from rules? 4.​If you are watching a movie, identify which characters and qualities are presented in an attractive way. Pay attention to the traits that are exhibited by the villains. The protagonist and antagonist are often archetypes, or representations of ideas.

DAVID BENIOFF: You don’t enter into any adaptation process lightly. In the case of Game of Thrones, we’ve dedicated six years of our lives to the show. We did it for a simple reason that will be familiar to George’s readers: We fell in love with the books. We fell in love with the world he created, with the sprawl of Westeros and Essos. We fell in love with the characters, hundreds of them, the good as well as the bad, with the Starks and the Lannisters and the Targaryens and the Greyjoys. We fell in love with the brutality of the narrative: No one is ever safe. Good does not triumph over evil. Awful people have sympathetic traits and lovable people have loathsome traits.

Preassessment Sit comfortably. Take a few deep breaths, relax, and answer the following questions in writing. Where is your self-esteem lately? Some answer this simply, as in low, medium, or high, or on a scale from 1 to 10. For some, responses are more complex. For instance, you might note that your self-esteem, in truth, fluctuates, or that, although you are growing stronger, you still struggle with mistakes you make or have made, or with expectations you or others have. There is power and courage in honestly acknowledging what is. Just observe where you are now, without judging yourself or wondering what others might think. How did your family of origin contribute, for good and bad, to your self-esteem? What have you learned to do to increase your self-esteem? What, if anything, can make you inferior as a person? What, if anything, can make you superior as a person? Using an artistic medium—colored pens or pencils, paint, crayons, finger paints, and so forth—draw your opinion of yourself on a separate sheet of paper. There is something revealing and almost magical in expressing without words how you experience yourself. The answers to questions three, four, and five especially can provide insight into what can ultimately strengthen self-esteem, although not in the ways most people think. Did you notice that the very things that raise self-esteem can also threaten it? For example, if getting a raise at work lifts your self-esteem, does failing to get a promotion cause it to fall? If a compliment makes you feel superior, does criticism make you feel inferior? If love raises self-esteem, does a relationship that does not work well destroy it? Many assume that we get value from what we do; from skills, talents, and character traits; or from acceptance from others. While all of these are desirable, I suggest that none of these make good first steps for self-esteem building. Where, then, does human value come from?

Our egos divide the world into positive and negative, good and bad. Most aspects of our shadows, these qualities that we see as “negative,” would in fact be valuable strengths if we made them conscious. Characteristics that look immoral, barbaric, or embarrassing to us are the “negative” side of a valuable energy, a capacity we could make use of. You will never find anything in the unconscious that will not be useful and good when it is made conscious and brought to the right level. What part of you will be hidden behind this symbol, the thief? Perhaps a lively trickster, with all sorts of surprising talents. Perhaps a juvenile delinquent in you who has never been allowed to grow up and put his heroic urge into something useful and mature. Perhaps it is Dionysus, who has had to hide out in the unconscious because you have no natural place for his ecstatic and lyrical spirit in the midst of your purposive life. Only you will be able to say what part of you is represented by this symbol if it appears in your dream—for it is your own unconscious that holds the clues. But you may be sure that if you give it its place, and hear what it has to say, it will be revealed as a valuable part of your inner self. Curiously, people usually resist their good qualities even more emphatically than they resist facing their negative qualities. There may be a character in your dream who behaves in a noble and courageous way. Since that inner person is part of you, its qualities are also yours. So long as you are facing your negative and immature traits squarely, you also have a duty to acknowledge the fine qualities in yourself, and to live them consciously.

It’s clear: culture’s distorted definition of success will leave you vacant, broken, and washing up against the rocks of an empty glass. However, let this book be a sword. A piece of truth warring against an enemy disguised as a friend. Let it be the eyes you need to find yourself. The ears required to hear the code. Oblivion is the way of the wide. Its burden is a feather of iron. But truth always comes at the cost of change, growth, and resistance. I’d like to close this book by exploring the concept of maturity. I’ve defined maturity as “choosing to walk in godly character traits that are not natural to your personality.” In other words, conforming our flesh, our mind, our emotions, and our hearts to the Word of God.

character is built not only through austerity and hardship. It is also built sweetly through love and pleasure. When you have deep friendships with good people, you copy and then absorb some of their best traits.

YEAR 2020 THE WORST WORLD’S STINGER You have challenged us to the core and you have stripped us naked in every aspects of our lives and you are still in the business of robbing us more than ever. You have snatched our social freedom out of our lives. You have destroyed our health You have stolen our peace and joy You have have taken away our loved ones You have have taken away our dear friends You have ambushed our jobs You have swallowed our finances You have instilled so much hatred in the entire world You have created division among humankind like never before You have shaken the foundations of our faith in God You have deceived so many people You have exposed the uncertainty of the church You have diminished our good character traits You have buried so many dreams and visions in the darkest cave of fear MY TAKE AWAY FROM YOUR NASTY DEEDS I have learned to listen and think before I say or do anything I have learned to stand firm for the truth of Jesus Christ I have learned to promote love and peace I have learned to promote respect and kindness I have learned to promote integrity and loyalty I have learned to listen more from my helper the Holy Spirit I have seen the power of God paralysed your devilish tactics God is in control and He has the final say He is Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last The Beginning and the End and nothing is impossible with Him. Good bye year 2020, we thank God that we will never see you again and we will never forget your barbaric deeds of terror. I will surely enter the year 2021 with my head held high because I know my redeemer lives. Thank you Lord Jesus for your unconditional love and for your divine protection!!!!

Too many rights without responsibility. Gives people evil power. It result to the extinct of morals, manners, values, respect, humanity, love, and other good character traits.

Every character I create begins with a personality trait or eccentricity and, like each of us, I add layers to the character – some good; some bad – until I have a multi-dimensional person who is real enough for the reader to believe they have met them or known someone just like them in real life. Some of these layers may be based on a trait I have recognised in someone I have known, whether it is a mum in the playground or a man I have sat next to on the train, but none of them are real people.

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.

One good way to inventory ourselves is to ask ourselves questions about specific character traits. Then we examine in writing the ways that we’ve exhibited these characteristics in our lives. For instance, we might ask ourselves if we have been prideful. Have arrogance and false pride characterized our behavior? If so, we list them in our inventory. Then, we illustrate the characteristic of pride by listing examples of how pride has caused us to act.

We must learn and then teach our children that niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait.

It is also built sweetly through love and pleasure. When you have deep friendships with good people, you copy and then absorb some of their best traits. When you love a person deeply, you want to serve them and earn their regard. When you experience great art, you widen your repertoire of emotions. Through devotion to some cause, you elevate your desires and organize your energies. Moreover, the struggle against the weaknesses in yourself is never a solitary struggle. No person can achieve self-mastery on his or her own. Individual will, reason, compassion, and character are not strong enough to consistently defeat selfishness, pride, greed, and self-deception. Everybody needs redemptive assistance from outside—from family, friends, ancestors, rules, traditions, institutions, exemplars, and, for believers, God. We all need people to tell us when we are wrong, to advise us on how to do right, and to encourage, support, arouse, cooperate, and inspire us along the way.