Quotes About Character

Esse quam videri - To be, rather than to seem (to be)

But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle—friendship can only exist between good men.

Instead let Virtue herself, by her own unaided allurements, summon you to a glory that is genuine and real.

It's not by strength or speed or swiftness of body that great deeds are done, but by wisdom, character, and sober judgment.

Honesty is the best policy

As for you, my young friends, I urge you to strive for virtue, for without it friendship cannot exist. And friendship, aside from virtue, is the greatest thing we can find in life.

It is not merriment and wantonness, nor laughter or jesting, the comrade of frivolity, that make men happy; those are happy, often in sadness, whose wills are strong and true.

Angustus animus pec?niam amat.

But of all the bonds of fellowship, there is none more noble, none more powerful than when good men of congenial character are joined in intimate friendship.

Denn wirklich tugendhaft wollen nicht so Viele sein als scheinen.

To retain self-control, mental poise, equanimity, under all provocations, great or small, is an indication of a fine strong character. It is a triumph of strength over weakness, of greatness over littleness. The habit of conquering ourselves is the habit of victory; it strengthens all the faculties.

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. —KURT VONNEGUT JR.

Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.

Your friend is intellectually honourable, Jimmy's mother would say. He doesn't lie to himself.

If you do bad things for reasons you've been told are good, does it make you a bad person?

You could tell a lot about a person from their fridge magnets, not that he'd thought much about them at the time.

Miranda nods, because she knows that to be true: noble people don't do things for the money, they simply have money, and that's what allows them to be noble. They don't really have to think about it much; they sprout benevolent acts the way trees sprout leaves.

Is extreme goodness always weak? Can a person be good only in the absence of power? The Tempest asks us these questions. There is of course another kind of strength, which is the strength of goodness to resist evil; a strength that Shakespeare's audience would have understood well. But that kind of strength is not much on display in The Tempest. Gonzalo is simply not tempted. He doesn't have to say no to a sinfully rich dessert, because he's never offered one.

Roughing it builds a boy's character, but only certain kinds of roughing it.

Never trust a man with new clothes.

La grandeza está en la virtud, no en la venganza

She said that wanting to be liked was a weakness of character.

I always remembered what she looked like, the dried apple face, the silvery gray hair, the snapping blue eyes.

You yourself would never have done such things! But you yourself will never have had to.