Quotes About Character

Mr. Lincoln had no faith and no hope in the usual acceptation of those words," Mary Lincoln recalled. "He never joined a Church; but still, as I believe, he was a religious man by nature.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:

Such was the Bush code: Strive for victory, but never seem self-involved

The message of Martin Luther King, Jr.—that we should be judged on the content of our character, not on the color of our skin

what mattered was what you did once in power, not what you said in order to get there.

He is the representative of no constituency, but of the whole people. When he speaks in his true character, he speaks for no special interest. If he rightly interpret the national thought and boldly insist upon it, he is irresistible; and the country never feels the zest of action so much as when its President is of such insight and caliber.

Jefferson was among the greatest men who had ever lived, a Renaissance figure who was formidable without seeming overbearing, sparkling without being showy, winning without appearing cloying.

Letter from Alexander Hamilton, Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States, it argued that Adams did "not possess the talents adapted to the administration of government," and that "there are great intrinsic defects in his character which unfit him for the office

what I believe true dignity consists, that is to say, honesty, propriety of conduct, and honest independence.

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user….

You've just got to pick the man you think is best on the basis of his past history

I knew that a President can appeal to the best in our people or the worst; he can call for action or live with inaction.

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user….I believe in suffrage for women in America, because I think they are fit for it. I believe for women, as for men, more in the duty of fitting one's self to do well and wisely with the ballot than in the naked right to cast the ballot.

A tiny little baby!' says Tam. 'People look at me like I'm an animal. People who don't know me judge me. I always remember going up to visit someone in prison, and this woman was sitting there. She was looking at me, growling a bit, and I could imagine what she was thinking: There's a pedophile! Anyway, I later discovered about her character. And I'll tell you, it outweighed anything I'd ever done.' 'What had she done?' I ask. 'Shoplifting,' says Tam. There is silence.

Then I get worried that if anyone is really paying attention to Happy's predilections, they might become wary of his wholesale compassion and suspect him of being an imaginary character, created by a journalist, to trick businesses into inadvertently revealing their data-trafficking practices. So I untick tigers.

I had once thought strength of character was a hardening of oneself; an intricate protection system by which you reconciled yourself to the truths of life and learned to let them not bother you. But all systems of character building go right out the window when you find there aren't anymore truths.. or none you recognize.

We are our choices

L'integrità è un valore neutro. Anche le iene hanno una loro integrità. Sono iene allo stato puro.

Once a killer, always a killer.

It was this other side of Avery - the fact that he so visibly had an other side - that was helping me finally understand all three of the dimensions in Kafka: that a man could be a sweet, sympathetic, comically needy victim and a lascivious, self-aggrandizing, grudge-bearing bore, and also, crucially, a third thing: a flickering consciousness, a simultaneity of culpable urge and poignant self-reproach, a person in process.

Some of the most influential novels of recent years, by Rachel Cusk and Karl Ove Knausgaard, take the method of self-conscious first-person testimony to a new level. Their more extreme admirers will tell you that imagination and invention are outmoded contrivances; that to inhabit the subjectivity of a character unlike the author is an act of appropriation, even colonialism; that the only authentic and politically defensible mode of narrative is autobiography.

Response to the question by The Atlantic: Who is the Greatest Fictional Character of All Time? God is the author of all the other characters, and of all the other authors of all the other characters, unless he doesn't exist--and said existence, in its disputation, is one of the greatest ongoing narratives in human storytelling.

I'm not sure I could trust a man who would bypass an Oreo in favor of vanilla wafers. It's a fundamental character flaw, possibly a sign of true evil.

Often it was the most unlikely people who found within themselves a spark of something greater. It was probably always there, but most people are never tested, and they go through their whole lives without ever knowing that when things are at their worst, they are at their best.