Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
Kahlil Gibran
Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it, piece by piece — by thought, choice, courage, and determination.
H. Jackson Brown Jr. (via creatingaquietmind)

(via booklover)

Source: creatingaquietmind

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I see its faults very plainly, as plainly as you may see them, but still I do not feel apologetic about this play. Unskilled and awkward as I was at this initial period of my playwriting, I certainly had a moral earnestness which I cannot boast of today, and I think that moral earnestness is a good thing for any times, but particularly for these times.
Tennessee Williams (via thebronzemedal)

Source: thebronzemedal

Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate and generous - not just to some people in some circumstances - but to everyone all the time.
Thomas J. Watson, Sr
People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
Hermann Hesse
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.
Oscar Wilde
I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.
Augusten Burroughs (via thresca)

Source: thresca

I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.… …one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right. You died when you refused to stand up for truth. You died when you refused to stand up for justice.
Dr. Martin Luther King (via azspot)

Source: azspot