The Christian Man's Perspective at the Confluence of Religion & Politics

Reputation And Character

Douglas MacArthur

A person’s reputation is like his shadow.  Sometimes it goes before him, making a great to-do about nothing.  Sometimes it lags behind, according him a fame he no longer deserves.  Sometimes it is bigger than the man himself.  Sometimes it is smaller, perhaps never reflecting his true stature at all.  But when one stands under the judgment of his peers, like a tower at mid-day, his shadow does not exist.  All he is now is his character.

Character and reputation are miles apart.  Character has substance.  It is as long at noon-day as it is at evening.  Character has weight and carries an impact, and when it passes there is left an empty space.  So it is that a man may suffer the loss of his reputation and still retain his character.  That is, he may be misjudged, be the victim of false witness, or be brought low by accident or misfortune, and still keep his integrity.

On the other hand, no man’s character can disintegrate without his reputation following after.  And once both are gone, we have living witness of those saddest words of tongue or pen — “It might have been.”  There are those who live on their reputation and pay to have it built up skillfully in the public mind.  They have their reward, such as it is.  But character is what one lives with, and brings the one reward that never tarnishes or grows cheap — in the dignity of self-respect.

Reputation and character; shadow and substance.  Pathetic are those who build up the first at the expense of the second, only to lose both.