character
Take things more easily. Don’t ask yourself so much whether this or that is good for you. Don’t question your conscience so much—it will get out of tune like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions. Don’t try so much to form your character—it’s like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose. Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself.
The Portrait of a Lady (New York: Bantam, 2007), [Bantam Classic reissue], 223.
Be as good as it is in your nature to be.
June 3, 1920 letter to Louis Untermeyer, in The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 108.
It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.
“How Will You Measure Your Life?,” Harvard Business Review, July 1, 2010.