Quotes About Character

What's bred in the bone is sure to come out in the flesh.

She was--I keep using the past tense; I ought to say she is--one of those people who, at first sight, look plain, are quiet, unassertive, unmemorable even. But who, when they start to talk and you get to know them, become more and more attractive and impressive, and you see that in fact they are beautiful. Not conventionally beautiful, not celebrity beautiful, but beautiful all through.

If leaders exploit public fears to herd people in directions they might not otherwise choose, then fear itself can quickly become a self-perpetuating and freewheeling force that drains national will and weakens national character, diverting attention from real threats deserving of healthy and appropriate fear and sowing confusion about the essential choices that every nation must constantly make about its future.

As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.

By forty, everyone has the face they deserve,' wrote George Orwell

It was as if a vital evolutionary advantage had been bestowed centuries ago on those members of the species who lived in a state of concern about what was to happen next. These ancestors might have failed to savour their experiences appropriately, but they had at least survived and shaped the character of their descendants, while their more focused siblings, at one with the moment and with the place where they stood, had met violent ends on the horns of unforeseen bison.

A man can acquire anything in solitude except a character

To assess a nation through its economic data is a little like re-envisaging oneself via the results of a blood test, whereby the traditional markers of personality and character are set aside and it is made clear that one is at base, where it really counts, a creatinine level of 3.2, a lactate dehydrogenase of 927, a leukocyte (per field) of 2 and a C-reactive protein of 2.42.

if we are prone to burst into tears after only a few harsh words about our character or achievements, it may be because the approval of others forms an essential part of our capacity to believe that we are right.

Good nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of all virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of disposition. William Hazlitt, 'On the Knowledge of Character' (1822)

A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.

The equanimity with regard to my handwriting vanishes when I look at the corrections I make to a script...here my handwriting is big, childish, clumsy with no evidence of character and purpose... mine reverts to the all-over-the-place stuff I used to write while I was in the army and before I got to University... why I've no idea. But it is so.

I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death .... is the true measure of the Divine within us. Some, like Crossen, choose to do harm to themselves and others. Others, like Kenji, bear up under their pain and help others to bear it. - Catherine in Moloka'i.

Humility moves more mountains than arrogance.

Integrity is a high rock above which the stormy ocean of worldly troubles cannot rise.

Time reveals character.

our first responsibility is to remove the weeds from our own garden. We must take the high road ourselves before exhorting others to do so.

Captain Phasma. Remember me?" He moved his weapon slightly. "Here's my blaster, ya still wanna inspect it?" Phasma held on to her dignity. "Yes, I remember you. FN-2187." Finn shook his head curtly. "Not anymore. My name is Finn. A real name for a real person. And I'm in charge now.

Definitely this man was not now and never had been a stormtrooper or anything like it. What he had been, maybe, was someone not unlike herself. A bit of a businessman, a bit of a con man, a bit of an adventurer. And since he was older, it was only reasonable to assume that he had been a bit more of all of those things than herself.

What more valuable possession does a homeless man have than his honor?

Typical Ren, Hux thought. Self-centered, arrogant, indifferent to the interests of others.

One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.

Lewis passionately believed that education is not about providing information so much as cultivating "habits of the heart"—producing "men with chests," as he puts it in his book The Abolition of Man, that is, people who not only think as they should but respond as they should, instinctively and emotionally, to the challenges and blessings the world offers to them.

Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free.