Quotes About Character

God isn't interested in helping us with our self-improvement program; he is interested in our holiness.

We all have an ongoing narrative inside our heads, the narrative that is spoken aloud if a friend asks a question. That narrative feels deeply natural to me. We also hang on to scraps of dialogue. Our memories don't usually serve us up whole scenes complete with dialogue. So I suppose I'm saying that I like to work from what a character is likely to remember, from a more interior place.

If you want to be original, don't labor to be original. Rather, work on yourself, your mind, and then say what you think. This was Stendhal's advice. Actually, he said: "If you want to be witty, work on your character and say what you think on every occasion.

Every yielding to temptation is a hindrance, not a help, to moral development; but every temptation offers what, rightly employed, is an indispensable means of moral development. For all moral development is through temptation to virtue.

But the heart finds no refuge in an Infinite and an Eternal Energy from which all things proceed. That refuge is found only in the faith that God has entered a human life, taken the helm, ruled heart and hand and tongue, written in terms of human experience the biography of God in history, revealed in the teaching of Christ the truth of God, in the life of Christ the character of God, in the passion of Christ the suffering of God.

There can be no virtue without temptation; for virtue is victory over temptation.

An untempted soul may be innocent, but cannot be virtuous, for virtue is the choice of right when wrong presses itself upon us and demands our choosing.

The true coronation of character is love. The true test of love is self-sacrifice. He knows not how to love who knows not how to suffer for love's sake. The love that costs nothing is worth—what it costs.

And the first thing that Christ says to us is this: Is that the kind of life you want to live? Is that the kind of person you want to be? Do you want to live in this world to see what you can get out of it, or do you want to live in this world to see what you can put into it?

This is what Jesus Christ came to do. Not to show how we can escape hell and get into heaven, but to show how we can escape from ourselves and become other selves; to show how we may cease to be what we are and become what we desire to be. He came that he might teach us and empower us to be the men we want to be, the men we ought to be.

We think if we can only take the temptation away from men, men will be virtuous. We are mistaken. Men are made virtuous by confronting temptation.

The qualities that get a man into power are not those that lead him, once established, to use power wisely.

Swinburne was an absurd character. He was a bird of showy strut and plumage. One could not but admire his glorious feathers; but, as soon as he began to moult ... one saw how very little body there was underneath.

When one has praised Turgenev, however, for the beauty of his character and the beautiful truth of his art, one remembers that he, too, was human and therefore less than perfect. His chief failing was, perhaps, that of all the great artists, he was the most lacking in exuberance. That is why he began to be scorned in a world which rated exuberance higher than beauty or love or pity.

What is it that remains essentially you?

Luther describes how backbiters are like hyenas or dogs who dig up stinking human corpses, pullulating with decay and full of worms, and bite into them—"Ugh, what a dreadful monster the backbiter is!

He's [Gerald Ford] a nice guy but he played too much football with his helmet off.

Gerry Ford is a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.

You can't serve God by acting contrary to His nature

Every time you compromise, something inside your spirit dies a little

Guard your heart, son," Eli said in a hushed voice. "That's what God looks at—your heart. Most folks look at the outside things, like the color of your skin. But God looks at your heart.

To say that he 'nailed a subject's soul to the canvas' makes the assumption that we persons, as well as artists, can see one another's souls. Maybe we do. Maybe we all have the ability to perceive another's soul, and do so every day, only we take it for granted, and don't even know it when we're doing it. We call it knowing someone's 'character' or 'personality.

It is better to lack the semblance of honor but possess it than to possess the semblance and lack the honor.

I would still be inclined to argue that you are underestimating the value of Twaddle's good name, for it is all that he has. As you yourself just pointed out, he is nothing but a name.