The Road to Character

The first big thing suffering does is it drags you deeper into yourself. The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that people who endure suffering are taken beneath the routine busyness of life and find they are not who they believed themselves to be. The pain involved in, say, composing a great piece of music or the grief of having lost a loved one smash

Adam I achieves success by winning victories over others. But Adam II builds character by winning victories over the weaknesses in himself.

You foolishly judge other people by their abilities, not by their worth.

Adam II lives by an inverse logic. It’s a moral logic, not an economic one. You have to give to receive. You have

They had to descend into the valley of humility to climb to the heights of character.

The résumé virtues are the ones you list on your résumé, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being—whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationsh

She returned to this theme again and again, wrestling with her divided self: her solitary nature and also her craving for others. “The only answer in this life, to the loneliness we are all bound to feel, is community,” she wrote. “The living together, working together, sharing together, loving God and loving our brother, and living close to him in

Humility is freedom from the need to prove you are superior all the time, but egotism is a ravenous hunger in a small space—self-concerned, competitive, and distinction-hungry. Humility is infused with lovely emotions like admiration, companionship, and gratitude. “Thankfulness,” the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, said, “is a soil in whi

This was the memo he was going to release if the D-Day invasion failed. “Our landings…have failed…and I have withdrawn the troops,” he wrote. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the