“Difficulty attracts the man of character, because it is in embracing it that he realizes himself.”
— Charles de Gaulle
From Le Fil de l'epee, 1932. De Gaulle wrote it as a colonel reflecting on command, action, and the kind of man tested by hard times.
In 1932, before the crowds, before June 1940, I was still writing in relative obscurity. I knew what it meant to feel unseen and still choose the harder road. If life is tightening around you, do not ask only how to escape it. Take hold of it. Character is revealed in the grip.