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:
“When needs and means become abstract in quality, abstraction is also a character of the reciprocal relation of individuals to one another. This abstract character, universality, is the character of being recognized and is the moment which makes concrete, i.e. social, the isolated and abstract needs and their ways and means of satisfaction.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Pity the man who has a character to support—it is worse than a large family—he is silent poor indeed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Science asks no questions about the ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judge it by its performance; and it is thus that a knowledge of nature, having all the certainty which the senses are competent to inspire, has been attained—a knowledge which maintains a strict neutrality toward all philosophical systems and concerns itself not with the genesis or a priori grounds of ideas.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)