Quotes About Character

what I want you to be - I don't mean physically but morally: you are very well physically - is a firm fellow, a fine firm fellow, with a will of your own, with resolution. with determination. with strength of character that is not to be influenced except on good reason by anybody, or by anything. That's what I want you to be. That's what your father, & your mother might both have been

You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles Darnay

Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!

a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places and not quite so loose in others.

You cannot stain a black coat

Will you never understand that I am incorrigible?

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

I have often thought him since, like the steam hammer, that can crush a man or pat an eggshell, in his combination of strength with gentleness

That I growed up a man and not a beast says something for me.

Such is the sleight of hand by which we juggle with ourselves, and change our very weaknesses into stanch and most magnanimous virtues!

Boiled beef and greens constitute the day's variety on the former repast of boiled pork and greens; and Mrs. Bagnet serves out the meal in the same way, and seasons it with the best of temper: being that rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a hint that it might be Better; and catches light from any little spot of darkness near her.

Biddy was never insulting, or capricious, or Biddy to-day and somebody else to-morrow; she would have derived only pain, and no pleasure, from giving me pain; she would far rather have wounded her own breast than mine. How could it be, then, that I did not like her much the better of the two?

Many a gentleman lives well upon a soft head, who would find a heart of the same quality a very great drawback.

Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better.

It may be the character of his mind, to be always in singular need of occupation. That may be, in part, natural to it; in part, the result of affliction. The less it was occupied with healthy things, the more it would be in danger of turning in the unhealthy direction. He may have observed himself, and made the discovery.

It was an instinctive testimony to Little Dorrit's worth and difference from all the rest, that the poor young fellow honoured and loved her for being simply what she was.

Oh indeed! Our and the Wilfers' Mutual Friend, my dear.

Uriah gave a kind of snivel. I think to express sympathy.

He is an honorable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.

Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way about him that was very taking. I had never seen anyone then, and I have never seen anyone since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There was something wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and something that at the same time whispered to me he would never be very successful or rich.

Whatsume'er the failings on his part, Remember reader he were that good in his hart.

It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her time and since) that whenever her original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it.

He was simply and staunchly true to his duty alike in the large case and in the small. So all true souls ever are. So every true soul ever was, ever is, and ever will be. There is nothing little to the really great in spirit.

I resolved to tell my guardian that I doubted Orlick being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at Miss Havisham's. 'Why of course he is not the right sort of man, Pip,' said my guardian, comfortably satisfied beforehand on the general head, 'because the man who fills the post of trust never is the right sort of man.