“No change in circumstances can repair a defect of character.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "No change in circumstances can repair a defect of character." by Ralph Waldo Emerson?

Ralph Waldo Emerson 727

American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

Jason Fried software entrepreneur

Source: Rework

“You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

“Character, not circumstances, makes the man.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

"Democracy and Education" http://web.archive.org/20071031084046/www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.4/html/222.html, speech, Institute of Arts and Sciences, Brooklyn NY (30 September 1896)

“There is no such thing as a hopeless situation. Every single circumstances of your life can change!”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

“Most people would rather change their circumstances to improve their lives when instead they to change themselves to improve their circumstances.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

“Instead, therefore, of saying that Man is the creature of Circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that Man is the architect of Circumstance. It is Character which builds an existence out of Circumstance.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Life and Works of Goethe (1855; repr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1856) vol. 1, p. 30, often misattributed to Thomas Carlyle.
Context: Instead, therefore, of saying that Man is the creature of Circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that Man is the architect of Circumstance. It is Character which builds an existence out of Circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels, one warehouses, another villas.