The ancient Greek word for character is Ethos - the basis for "ethics", the study of morality and principles relating to right and wrong conduct. Heraclitus, the famous pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, held a belief that a person's ethos is their daimon, which actually translates as "fate". Ethos ...
There is a, uh, poignant vignette in "The Year of Getting to Know Us" wherein the narrator - a high school English teacher -catches his wife (herself a writer, a journalist) canoodling with a younger man at Denny's. Narrator sits in his booth, with little emotional reaction, sizing up the rival's...