As quoted in Essential Care : An Ethics of Human Nature (2008) by Leonardo Boff, p. 82
“Without tenderness, a man is uninteresting.”
“If you wish,
I shall grow irreproachably tender:
not a man, but a cloud in trousers!”
Page 61.
The Cloud in Trousers (1915)
“Tenderness is a deeper instinct than seduction, which is why it is so hard to give up hope.”
Source: The Elementary Particles
Resignation letter, 1857
As quoted in "On The Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Hillary Rodham Clinton in Issues of Democracy Vol. 3, No. 3 (October 1998), p. 11
The Canon of Judo (1956, 1960)
Zartheit zwischen Menschen ist nichts anderes als das Bewußtsein von der Möglichkeit zweckfreier Beziehungen.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 20
Minima Moralia (1951)
“Confusing ‘Character’ with ‘Temperament’”
Clearing the Ground (1986)
Context: The core in the mystery of what we call personality resides in the individual mix between character and temperament. The most successful personalities are those who achieve the best balance between the strict demands of character and the lenient tolerance of temperament. This balance is the supreme test of genuine leadership, separating the savior from the fanatic.
The human Jesus is, to my mind, the ultimate paradigm of such psychic equilibrium. He was absolutely hard on himself and absolutely tender toward others. He maintained the highest criteria of conduct for himself but was not priggish or censorious or self-righteous about those who were weaker and frailer. Most persons of strength cannot accept or tolerate weakness in others. They are blind to the virtues they do not possess themselves and are fiercely judgmental on one scale of values alone. Jesus was unique, even among religious leaders, in combining the utmost of principle with the utmost of compassion for those unable to meet his standards.
We need to understand temperament better than we do and to recognize its symbiotic relationship to character. There are some things people can do to change and some things they cannot do — character can be formed, but temperament is given. And the strong who cannot bend are just as much to be pitied as the weak who cannot stiffen.
