So, I have a character who is running for office and he's talking about his "qualities" and how many good qualities he has, and then later wants to refer to how "Strong" the qualities are. But can I say "strength of qualities"? It seems somehow redundant, kind of getting close to "strength of strengths" or something. Can I use "magnitude of qualities" or something? Something that says that he not only has the qualities, but they are very prominent in his character. Maybe "prominent qualities"? Thank you for your help!
I think you can just use "strengths". "My strengths are in economics and foreign policy." You don't have to say he has strong strengths or anything like that. The word "strengths" is enough.
The word "qualities" itself isn't working for me. You can have "good qualities" or "bad qualities" so "strength of qualities" doesn't really tell me if he's strongly good or strongly bad. I agree that just "strengths" is a better choice.
cf just said what i was going to... 'qualities' on its own has no relevant meaning there, since everything and everybody has some, be they good or bad ones... if you want to get into the 'strength' of his good ones, you'll have to be more specific...
I agree with the advice so far about using the word "strengths" instead of "qualities" which can have both positive and negative connotations. If you want your character to emphasise the strengths, the word "great" and its derivatives are popular choices: "My greatest strength is my humility" "I have great strength of character" (yes, I know the phrase is basically meaningless, but it's just the type of BS a politician would spout) "My understanding of foreign policy greatly strengthens my case" "One of my greater strengths is sincerity, and once I learned to fake that, I knew I'd got it made." and so on...
