Quotes About Character

Reputation is what men and women think of us. Character is what God and the angels know of us.

Human nature is not of itself vicious.

Panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered.

Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.

Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.

There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required. The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly; wherefore the different parts, by unnaturally opposing and destroying each other, prove the whole character to be absurd and useless.

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.

Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.

We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice, but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable: and amongst the various assumptions of character, which hypocrisy has taught, and men have practised, there is none that raises a higher relish of disgust, than to see disappointed inveteracy twisting itself, by the most visible falsehoods, into an appearance of piety which it has no pretensions to.

for that which is a disgrace to human nature, throws something of a shade over all the human character, and each individual feels his share of the wound that is given to the whole.

I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.

Character is much easier kept than recovered, and that man, if any such there be, who, from sinister views, or littleness of soul, lends unseen his hand to injure it, contrives a wound it will never be in his power to heal.

love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

To understand the nature and quantity of government proper for man, it is necessary to attend to his character. As Nature created him for social life, she fitted him for the station she intended. In all cases she made his natural wants greater than his individual powers. No one man is capable, without the aid of society, of supplying his own wants, and those wants, acting upon every individual, impel the whole of them into society, as naturally as gravitation acts to a center.

In the following pages I offered nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, then that he will divest himself of prejudice and preposession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; but he will put on, or rather that he will not put off the true character of a man, and generously in enlarge his views beyond the present day.

The wise, and the worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet;

out the matters contained in those books, together with the assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue, in n pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.

Resolution is our inherent character, and courage hath never yet forsaken us. Wherefore, what is it that we want? Why is it that we hesitate?

But, besides the general character of all the prophets, they had also a particular character. They were in parties, and they prophesied for or against, according to the party they were with; as the poetical and political writers of the present day write in defence of the party they associate with against the other.

the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

Benjamin Franklin'i bilenler zihninin daima genç, karakterinin de daima dingin olduÄŸunu hat?rlayacakt?r; asla yaÅŸlanmayan bilim, daima onun sevgilisi olmuÅŸtur. Hiçbir zaman amaçs?z kalmam??t?r; amaçs?z kal?rsak, hastanede ölümü bekleyen bir sakattan fark?m?z kalmaz.

Of more worth is one honeset man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.