Learn English – Great (?) personality/character(?)

phrase-requestsword-choice

I'm looking for the appropriate English term for what I'd call a "große Persönlichkeit" in German.

  • This is not about someone who is famous,
  • neither about someone who tries to appear superior than others by making them small
  • but means someone who is wise, reflected, (possibly brave), emotionally stable and independent (in the positive sense), superior (in a way that doesn't oppress but rather the opposite) and has a good influence on other people, also by being a good example
  • This rough translation of a more or less idiomatic rule of thumb may also help to explain: A "große Persönlichket" will help other people to grow, while a "kleine Persönlichkeit" (small? personality?) will keep people down/small(?)/oppress people in order to seem larger (?)

Actually the last point is the context I want to explain in English.

I'm really unsure which of the "groß" (great/large/big/?) terms is appropriate and whether to use personality or character or something else.

Best Answer

What comes to my mind is "a person of great character" or "of noble character", where "character" has the meaning

moral excellence and firmness

This site has some interesting reading on this meaning of the word:

During the 1800s, “character was a key word in the vocabulary of Englishmen and Americans,” and men were spoken of as having strong or weak character, good or bad character, a great deal of character or no character at all. Young people were admonished to cultivate real character, high character, and noble character and told that character was the most priceless thing they could ever attain. Starting at the beginning of the 20th century, however, Susman found that the ideal of character began to be replaced by that of personality.

"A person of integrity" would also work well, but personally I feel that something with "character" is better, as there is a sense that character is cultivated, and from a desire to generally be a good, noble, etc, person, whereas "integrity" can be an affectation.

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