Character
After fifteen years spent in Japan, Adams' relations with his compatriots were not the easiest. He initially shunned the company of the newly arrived English sailors in 1613 and could not get on good terms with Saris.
However, Cocks, the head of the Hirado factory, progressively came to appreciate Adams' character and distinctively Japanese self-control. In a letter to the East India Company:
"I find the man tractable and willing to do your worships the best service he may... I am persuaded I could live with him seven years before any extraordinary speeches should happen between us." (Cocks' Diary)
Read more about this topic: William Adams (sailor)
Famous quotes containing the word character:
“The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love
Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough
And pressed at midnighht in some public place
Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“If there be no nobility of descent in a nation, all the more indispensable is it that there should be nobility of ascent—a character in them that bear rule, so fine and high and pure, that as men come within the circle of its influence, they involuntarily pay homage to that which is the one pre-eminent distinction, the Royalty of Virtue.”
—Henry Codman Potter (1835–1908)