[StAnDeliver]

Most Americans, when defining greatness, adhere to something as doofus as setting an all-time game win record (and even that, only because an insular community was complicit in a cover-up) ...

But for me, it's the moments of inaction, the times you didn't do what you could, and the times you truly did what you could do, when you knew it was the right thing to do, that define a man.

[massgopguy]

“In what I have done and in what I have failed to do.”

[GOP Poet]

But for me, it's the moments of inaction, the times you didn't do what you could, and the times you truly did what you could do, when you knew it was the right thing to do, that define a man.

I nominate this for post of the year. :)

[pgkdan]

Character is doing the right thing, even when nobody is looking.

[bushpilot1]

Men fail when they begin to blame.

[ml/nj]

FReepers, Rushfans, Nitneymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Joe Pa, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Joe Pa. The noble Trustees
Hath told you Joe Pa was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Joe Pa answer'd it.
Here, under leave of the Board and the rest -
For the Trustees are honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men -
Come I to speak in Joe Pa's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But the Board says he was ambitious;
And the Trustees are honourable man.
He hath brought many wins here to State College
Whose bowl-fees did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Joe Pa seem ambitious?
When that the team had lost, Joe Pa hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet the Board says he was ambitious;
And the Trustees are honourable man.
You all did see that on Sportscenter
He was thrice presented a pro contract,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet the Board says he was ambitious;
And, sure, they are honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what the Board spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Joe Pa,
And I must pause till it come back to me.