Bessie Head Quotes

Blaming society makes it awfully easy for a person of weak character to shrug off his own responsibility for his actions.

There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.

In today's society, looking good and feeling good often trumps doing good and being good. And some people don't know the difference anymore.

People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called *character,* a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to the other, more instantly negotiable virtues.... character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a person who never gets used up. That is possible for those who never argue and strive with people and facts, but in all experience retires upon themselves, and look for the ultimate cause of things in themselves.

There are always two people involved in cruelty, aren't there? One to be vicious and someone to suffer! And what's the use of getting rid of - of wickedness, say - in the outside world if you let it creep back into things from inside you?

Nothing more guarantees the erosion of character than getting something for nothing. In the liberal welfare state, one develops an entitlement mentality. And the rhetoric of liberalism - labeling each new entitlement a 'right reinforces this sense of entitlement.' -

There is no surer road to destruction than prosperity without character.

Any excuse for non-performance, no matter how valid, weakens character.

People of poor character tend to blame their choices on circumstances. Ethical people make good choices regardless of circumstances. If they make enough good choices, they begin to create better conditions for themselves.

The evil done by oneself, self-begotten, self-bred, crushes the foolish, as a diamond breaks a precious stone.

The world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning.

Many people are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed; they chew the bitter pill which they would not even know to be bitter if they had the sense to swallow it whole in a cup of patience and water.

The two kinds of people on earth are the people who lift and the people who lean.

The entitlement mentality so carefully cultivated by liberal academics, politicians, clergymen, and journalists continues to corrode the self-sufficiency that once defined the American character.

God holds his people responsible for righteousness, not for results.

Tomorrow's character is made out of today's thoughts. Temptation may come suddenly, but sin does not.

People blame their environment, their education, their opportunities, their luck, for their condition. They are wrong. There is one person to blame — and only one — THEMSELVES.

How hard you work at correcting your faults reveals your character.

Happy people make people happy, but I can’t make someone be happy, and no one else can make me happy.

I feel my characters are valid, my characters are people, my characters have hope. Hope is the thing that'll take us through.

Baseball reveals character; golf exposes it.

Failure is a big part of a free market's success. People fail to live up to their potential, or to carry out all their good intentions, in all kinds of economic and political systems. Capitalism makes them pay a price for their failures, while socialism, feudalism, fascism and other systems enable personal failures, especially by those at the top, to be ignored.

If you really have integrity, there are very few people who can insult you, or honor you.

I am always struck by how difficult it is for people to see how much cruelty they are bringing not only upon animals but upon themselves and their loved ones and other people, how much we are screwing up the planet, how much we are hurting our own health, how hard it is to change all that, how eager people are to make a buck at everybody else's expense - all those things are discouraging.