This from Ralph Waldo Emerson In his later lecture on "Character" (not to be confused with the essay by that name in "Essays: Second Series:"There is a fear that pure truth, pure morals, will not make a religion for the affections. When-ever the sublimities of character shall be incarnated in a many, we may rely that awe and love and insatiable curiosity will follow his steps. Character is the habit of action from the permanent vision of truth. It carries a superiority to all the accidents of life. It compels right relation to every other man, - domesticates itself with strangers and enemies."...
It confers perpetual insight. It sees that a man's friends and his foes are of his own house-hold, of his own person. What would it avail me, if I could destroy my enemies? There would be as many to-morrow. That which I hate and fear is really in myself, and no knife is long enough to reach to its heart...
There is no end to the sufficiency of character. It can afford to wait ; it can do without what is called success ; it cannot but succeed. To a well-principled man existence is victory. He defends himself against failure in his main design by making every inch of the road to it pleasant. There is no trifle, and no obscurity to him : he feels the immensity of the chain whose last link he holds in his hand, and is led by it. Having nothing, this spirit bath all."
Blessings
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