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About this quote

What does it mean?
Character is revealed through how one responds to events, and events serve to show what character a person has.
In plain terms
Events show who we are, and who we are shapes how events unfold.
What can you take from it?
Look at actions during crises to understand true character.

Where it applies

  • literary analysis
  • personal reflection
  • team management

Putting it to work

  • assess leadership under pressure
  • write dynamic stories

Questions to consider

  • How did a recent challenge reveal your priorities?
  • Can events change character permanently?

Another view

Some events happen randomly regardless of character.

More from Henry James

  1. The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in gen…

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  2. We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, what the French call his donnee; our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it. Naturally I do not mean …

    Permalink to quote #54
  3. Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web, of the finest silken threads, suspended in the …

    Permalink to quote #51

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