Quotes About Character

God holds the saints responsible for emotions they do not have and ought to have, as well as for the emotions they have allowed that they ought not to have allowed.

We tend to think that a little anxiety and worry are simply an indication of how wise we really are, yet it is actually a much better indication of just how wicked we are.

Your growth in grace is not measured by the fact that you haven't turned back, but that you have an insight and understanding into where you are spiritually. Have you heard God say, "Come up higher," not audibly on the outer level, but to the innermost part of your character?

First Peter 4:12 says, "Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you . . . ." Rise to the occasion—do what the trial demands of you. It does not matter how much it hurts as long as it gives God the opportunity to manifest the life of Jesus in your body.

God has to take us into the valley and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the point where He can trust us with the reality of the vision

We can only be used by God after we allow Him to show us the deep, hidden areas of our own character.

God does not make us holy in the sense that He makes our character holy. He makes us holy in the sense that He has made us innocent before Him. And then we have to turn that innocence into holy character through the moral choices we make.

The true test of a person's spiritual life and character is not what he does in the extraordinary moments of life, but what he does during the ordinary times when there is nothing tremendous or exciting happening. A person's worth is revealed in his attitude toward the ordinary things of life when he is not under the spotlight (see John 1:35–37 and 3:30).

Be marked and identified with God's nature, and His blessing will flow through you all the time.

God has only one intended destiny for mankind—holiness. His only goal is to produce saints.

Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.

It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God: but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes

Let a man be either a hero or a saint. In between lies, not wisdom, but banality.

Every action alters the soul of the doer.

Jeder Grieche hat einen Zug von Don Quijotte, jeder Römer einen von Sancho Pansa - was sie sonst noch waren, tritt dahinter zurück.

With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.

A really great man is known by three signs... generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, moderation in success.

A man's real nature is never altered by education.

Woman is soulless and possesses neither ego nor individuality, personality nor freedom, character nor will.

I have know a thousand scamps; but I never met one who considered himself so. Self-knowledge isn't so common.

What? A character almost as awful as Phaedre, and quite as desolate as Antigone, represented by a graceful coquette in point lace and pearls, who will take poison as sweetly as if it were a cup of coffee, and will die with elaborate care not to tumble her train? Preposterous!

Out campaigning, one is free from all that trash. Before the cannon's mouth men cannot stop to split straws; and with one's own life on a thread, one cannot stop to ruin another's character. I do not know how it is — I have read pretty widely, but philosophers never preached endurance to me as well as Nature.

When he had once determined on a thing he never looked back; sometimes it had been better for him if he had. Yet, in the long run, I have known more mischief done by indecision of character than anything else in the world, and he is safe to be the strongest and stoutest-hearted who never looks back, whether he has determined on quitting Sodom or on staying in it The evil lies in hasty judgment, not in prompt action.

I only know that a man who has the strength of the lion very often has also the tender touch of the dove.