“The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites.”

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. The idealists are usually not realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony. The philosopher Hegel said that truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in the emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. 658
American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Ci… 1929–1968

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“Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites. He knew that his disciples would face a difficult and hostile world, where they would confront the recalcitrance of political officials and the intransigence of the protectors of the old order. He knew that they would meet cold and arrogant men whose hearts had been hardened by the long winter of traditionalism. … And he gave them a formula for action, "Be ye therefore as wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." … We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.

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Variant: Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on.
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“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”

Wilhelm Stekel (1868–1940) Austrian physician and psychologist

Cited by a character in J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951) as a statement of Stekel, this has often been attributed to Salinger, and may actually be a paraphrase by him of a statement of the German writer Otto Ludwig (1813-1865) which Stekel himself quotes in his writings:
Das Höchste, wozu er sich erheben konnte, war, für etwas rühmlich zu sterben; jetzt erhebt er sich zu dem Größern, für etwas ruhmlos zu leben.
The highest he could raise himself to was to die gloriously for something; now he rises to something greater: to live humbly for something.
Gedanken Otto Ludwigs : Aus seinem Nachlaß ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Cordelia Ludwig (1903) p. 10 http://archive.org/stream/gedankenottolud00ludwgoog#page/n39/mode/2up; this is quoted by Stekel in "Die Ausgänge der psychoanalytischen Kuren" in Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse : Medizinische Monatsschrift für Seelenkunde (1913), p. 188 http://archive.org/stream/ZB_III_1913_4_5_k#page/n19/mode/2up, and in Das liebe Ich : Grundriss einer neuen Diätetik der Seele (1913), page 38 http://books.google.de/books?id=PgFAAAAAIAAJ&q=r%C3%BChmlich.
Misattributed

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“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”

Jerome David Salinger (1919–2010) American writer

Quoted by Salinger as a statement of the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel in The Catcher in the Rye, this has often been attributed to Salinger, and it may actually be a paraphrase by him of a statement of the German writer Otto Ludwig (1813-1865) which Stekel himself quotes in his writings:
Das Höchste, wozu er sich erheben konnte, war, für etwas rühmlich zu sterben; jetzt erhebt er sich zu dem Größern, für etwas ruhmlos zu leben.
The highest he could raise himself to was to die gloriously for something; now he rises to something greater: to live humbly for something.
Gedanken Otto Ludwigs : Aus seinem Nachlaß ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Cordelia Ludwig (1903), p. 10 http://archive.org/stream/gedankenottolud00ludwgoog#page/n39/mode/2up; this is quoted by Stekel in "Die Ausgänge der psychoanalytischen Kuren" in Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse : Medizinische Monatsschrift für Seelenkunde (1913), p. 188 http://archive.org/stream/ZB_III_1913_4_5_k#page/n19/mode/2up, and in Das liebe Ich : Grundriss einer neuen Diätetik der Seele (1913), page 38 http://books.google.de/books?id=PgFAAAAAIAAJ&q=r%C3%BChmlich.
Disputed

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