Quotes About Character

A false heart yields when sin comes with a bribe in its hand.

He was a man of excitable and fiery nature; but through his high-discipline he converted the fire into a central glow and motive force of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion.

I know of nothing more difficult than knowing who you are, and having the courage to share the reasons for the catastrophe of your character with the world.

Wills aren't really strong or weak; it is the characters that they express and serve that are.

My stories are malevolently anti-narrative, and my essays are maliciously anti-expository, but the ideology of my opposition arrived long after my antagonism had become a trait of character." -- William H. Gass, "Finding a Form

The less government we have the better—the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual. . . . —Politics Ralph Waldo Emerson C.E. 1844

She is what I feel to be a good person in the word's simplest and plainest meaning. Which includes lashing out with her claws on some occasions when others may consider it improper—I don't give a damn whether Ginny is "proper" or not; I like her. I like her values.

I never trust a fighting man who doesnt smoke or drink.

Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.

No truly great person ever thought themselves so.

Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.

Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.

Good temper is an estate for life.

Unless education promotes character making, unless it helps men to be more moral, more just to their fellows, more law abiding, more discriminatingly patriotic and public spirited, it is not worth the trouble taken to furnish it.

The essence of education is, in the words of William James, to teach a person what deserves to be valued, to impart ideals as well as knowledge, to cultivate in students the ability to distinguish the true and good from their counterfeits and the wisdom to prefer the former to the latter.

Therefore we must give a certain character to our activities. . . . In short, the habits we form from childhood make no small difference, but rather they make all the difference.

You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.

Better to be a strong man with a weak point, than to be a weak man without a strong point. A diamond with a flaw is more valuable that a brick without a flaw.

Habit is second nature, or rather, ten times nature.

Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making

Individuality is founded in feeling and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

Everybody ought to do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.