Quotes About Character

What matters is the general picture of the domestic environment, and this I have indicated, - vulgarity of character, love of glittering appearances, disorder, looseness of will, mastery of caprice, and more.

What is important is the general description of the domestic milieu and that has been shown here—vulgarity of character, love of gaudy appearance and clamor, a slackness of will, the rule of whim, and more. Out of that earth and that manure this flower was born.'' The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuous in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

The main thing is to remain oneself, under any circumstances; that was and is our common purpose.

you've got to learn to walk through a pigpen and not get dirty.

Beware of pride and arrogance, Charles, for they may betray you.

The very young woman can be charming and delightful and pretty but only a mature woman can be beautiful; and only a mature man can be strong enough to be tender.

When a character wants to do one thing and I want him to do another, the character is usually right.

Was Louis mean? He had always seemed the very spirit of generosity. When he had hardly sixpence left he would spend the coins he had on a bunch of violets. She couldn't bear to think of Louis as mean. Anything else but that.

The public Louis was a man you couldn't fault.

respectability with overtones of

Houses, like people, have their own peculiarities.

Be who you seem to be.

The real me isn't the person I describe, no the real me is the me revealed by my actions.

Character isn't what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be. It isn't a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits, and it only seems that way because of a glitch in the way our brains are organized. Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context.

What Hartshorne and May concluded, then, is that something like honesty isn't a fundamental trait, or what they called a unified trait. A trait like honesty, they concluded, is considerably influenced by the situation.

But the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." 1 Samuel 16:7

The mistake we make in thinking of character as something unified and all-encompassing is very similar to a kind of blind spot in the way we process information. Psychologists call this tendency the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which is a fancy way of saying that when it comes to interpreting other people's behavior, human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of situation and context.

What Hartshorne and May concluded, then, is that something like honesty isn't a fundamental trait, or what they called a "unified" trait. A trait like honesty, they concluded, is considerably influenced by the situation.

It's not about how smart you are. It's about your values.

Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context. The reason that most of us seem to have a consistent character is that most of us are really good at controlling our environment.

We talk a lot here about grit and self-control. The kids know what those words mean

look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on

There is nothing about an individual as important as his IQ, except possibly his morals