Quotes About Character

Austen is a moralist, but, as John Lauber has put it, she is not a punitive moralist. Sometimes her villains receive no more serious punishment than to achieve their desires. Often that is punishment enough.

Many saints were made out of passionate sinners—the angry, the hating, the lustful, the cynical; but none were ever made out of the slothful.

Sow a thought, reap an act. Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny.

Furthermore, the most popular modern answer to the question of what it means to be a good person is to be kind. Do not make other people suffer. If it doesn't hurt anyone, it's O.K. By this standard, God is not good it he lets us suffer. But by ancient standards, God might be good even though he lets us suffer, if he does it for the sake of the greater end of happiness, perfection of life and character and soul, that is, self.

The ultimate reason we must become holy is that that is the only way to become real.

If humility were not self-forgetfulness, any virtuous person would have the practical dilemma of either directing his attention to his own virtue, which naturally leads to pride, or denying it, which would be a lie.

manifests a good person, a good character, a good habit, and also because good deeds gradually form good habits, good character, good persons.

A habit is a stable disposition to act in a certain way, good or evil. Virtues are good habits; vices are bad habits.

Hypocrisy, it is said, is "the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

For Socrates, there are only two kinds of people: the wise, who know they are fools; and fools, who think they are wise. Similarly, for Christ and all the prophets, there are only two kinds of people: saints, who know they are sinners; and sinners, who think they are saints.

Simpsons boxers.

a follower tells, but a leader shows.

For we are like olives: only when we are crushed do we yield what is best in us.

Some persons are made more perfect by what befalls them, as is whatever befalls them can never make them less, can never bring them low, as it might others. --Gina Berriault, The Tea Ceremony

It struck me that his innate elegance, the product of his character & bearing much more than of the handsome suit and the suede shoes, had been paid for by the surviving of a thousand unimaginable difficulties, each painful to a varying degree. Then I realized that what I meant by elegance was really dignity, that for the first time I had recognized actual dignity in another human being, and that dignity was nothing like the self-congratulatory superiority people usually mistook for it.

the startling line in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, where Captain Hook is described: "The man isn't wholly evil; he has a thesaurus in his cabin.

There is a moral sturdiness to (hardware store owner) Charley that isn't advertised or boasted about, but is obvious to all who know him and quickly discerned by those who don't. Our country has lately been afflicted with television preachers and pundits who focus on our families while neglecting theirs. How vainglorious these critics seem, how vacuous and shallow they appear when placed alongside a man of Charley's stature.

First, humiliation, then humility, he would have said. And then comes humanity as a matter of course.

There is evil in the best of us, of course; but perhaps just a little bit more in the worst of us.

And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.

But you cannot change what you are, only what you do.

You might not have more courage, but you should be ashamed to show less.

Good and Evil are names for what people do, not for what they are...stopped believing there was a power of good and evil. That they were outside of us...People are too complicated for labels.

But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.