"A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza: read it forward, backward or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite life in the woods which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I can not doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment."

Elbert Hubbard.

It's a sobering thought, and one that should keep us always seeking to improve ourselves, because our children will surely be influenced far more by our character than our words.

Photo by Wojciech Grzanka