Quotes About Character

The penalty of deception is to become a deception, with all sense of moral discrimination vitiated. A man who lies habitually becomes a lie, and it is increasingly impossible for him to know when he is lying and when he is not. In other words, the moral mercury of life is reduced to zero.

Gentleness corrects whatever is offensive in our manner.

To get down to the quick of it, respect motivates me - not success.

Hamlet is egotism as it appears to itself, and Don Quixote is egotism as it appears to the detached observer.

Keep on being yourself.

How we respond in the face of a challenge tells us more about who we really are than all the pious rhetoric about our alleged attitudes, values or aspirations. [p37]

Timothy's eyes followed the straight back, the high shoulders, and the crisp white hair out of the door and out of his life -- a man, so he was to write years later, the like of whom he was never to met again, "because he was the only man I ever knew who could use words like honour, duty, and responsibility without making me feel like throwing up."

Apenas naquilo que o homem faz, segue fazendo, naquilo em que persevera, ele mostra caráter.

Teas vary as much in appearance as the different faces of men.

Tolerance is mans ornament, keeping promises is a sign of nobility, and bonding with others is a grace.

If one does not have these five things there is no good in him: intellect, religion, etiquette, shame and good manners.

Honor and dignity of man is only in virtue and piety.

If your heart isn't in the right place, you're no different from the beasts in the forest.

People look at you a certain way and somehow you wind up being that way.

A free society can survive only with men and women of integrity. Mediocrity can destroy us just as surely as perils far more famous. In a society that is willing to accept mediocrity, the opportunity for failure is boundless.

How we choose to deal with pain is ultimately the measure of who we are and of the success we have in closing our gaps.

The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity and many deeds of the past, in order to strengthen his character thereby.

Without temptation what value is virtue?

I think that Ryu Chishu, or Tanaka Kinuyo, or to be more precise, the imaginary characters they portrayed, were more real to the film buffs than any existing human being. This is why cinephiles are spookier, on the whole, than music lovers or balletomanes. For they are creatures of the dark, getting off on the lives of others.

They could never quite reconcile themselves to the idea that our lives don't follow the dramatic arc that a good author gives to a great literary character. Only in accidents of pure perfection does the world actually become a stage." (Rule of Four, 54-55)

I am a poet in deeds--not often in words.

Great men are not made by propaganda, but grow out of their actions

Plutarch's remark: 'When destiny raises a base character by acts of great importance, it reveals his lack of substance'

Her face had always held too much personality to be merely beautiful.