Quotes About Character

He had become a character in a play, same story, over and over.

She had a quality he had never known- she WAS quality.

We are not on this earth to accumulate victories, things, and experiences, but to be whittled and sandpapered until what's left is who we truly are.

But do not pretend that people become great by doing great things. They do great things because they are great, if the great things come along. But they are great just the same when the great things do not come along.

If you have character, endeavor, personality, courage and the capacity for concentrated labor, you will do what is your destiny – and, perhaps, even do it well.

Wise men, though all laws were abolished, would lead the same lives.

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

Politics, these days, is no occupation for an educated man, a man of character. Ignorance and total lousiness are better.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

Since the things we do determine the character of life, no blessed person can become unhappy. For he will never do those things which are hateful and petty.

I say that habit's but a long practice, friend, and this becomes men's nature in the end.

Wicked men obey out of fear; good men, out of love.

Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.

To enjoy the things we ought, and to hate the things we ought, has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids

One can aim at honor both as one ought, and more than one ought, and less than one ought. He whose craving for honor is excessive is said to be ambitious, and he who is deficient in this respect unambitious; while he who observes the mean has no peculiar name.

Men are good in but one way, but bad in many.

We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.

If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.

Both excess and defect are alike prejudicial to moral virtue.

As our acts vary, our habits will follow in their course.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.