Quotes About Character

Our character is a lifelong project, and perhaps the older we are, and the more fixed our shortcomings are, the more we can use inspiration to encourage our escape from the restraints of our deficiencies. The

You don't get to choose the value of what you do in others' eyes, so you have to take stock in knowing that doing the right thing is enough, no matter who notices.

There's a very interesting thing that Scott Fitzgerald said [about creating characters], 'If you start with a person, you end up with a type, but if you start with a type you wind up with nothing.' You set out to discover something in your writing and it is through the attempt to discover that you reflect. If you have your mind made up about something you'll reflect nothing.

There was the ocean, like a recurring character you forgot about for long stretches.

Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence.

where a person comes from means far less than what she makes of herself.

What a person does isn't the same as who a person is.

it was all very well being decent when things were smooth; but we often had rough times given us to show what we were. [. . .] Perhaps we are to have it now. If we are, it's up to us to show how we can deal with it. And we shan't do that by wailing over it.

An irascible man who understood his own character, he would hold off on any personnel decision for twenty-four hours, allowing his judgment to dominate his temper.

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities … because it is the quality which guarantees all others," Churchill said.

It is a mistake to think of courage as something you show to others. True courage is only something you show to yourself.

We think sometimes we're only drawn to the good, but we're actually drawn to the authentic. We like people who are real more than those who hide their true selves under layers of artificial niceties

My curls defined me; even my personality was curly, bouncy, springy, and playfully twisted.

But of course Anton turned out to be brave and strong, and so he died while he was still unlikable.

Love shall never write its lasting characters on my mind, till my reason invites it: and where hopes rests not, reason cannot abide.

Gladly would I possess the power of selecting my society. From that happy privilege I am debarred. But I seldom make one of a circle in which I do not find some novelty of character, and something either of excellence or absurdity from which I may draw improvement

In fine, that it is not enough to be good, without behaving in such a manner as shall make others acknowledge us to be so.

She said little in answer to the strenuous Pressures with which at last he ventur'd to enfold her, but not thinking it Decent, for the Character she had assum'd, to yield so suddenly, and unable to deny both his and her own Inclinations, she counterfeited a fainting, and fell motionless upon his Breast.

Sandy is kind. But she has a smart mind

The man, most man, Works best for men: and, if most man indeed, He gets his manhood plainest from his soul.

It is the nature of the human mind to convey its own character to whatever substance it conveys, whether it convey metaphysical impressions from itself to another mind, or literary compositions from one to another language.

The religious character was a sufficient objection — their character of prayer. Mr. Dilke begged me once, while I was writing for him, to write the name of God and Jesus Christ as little as I could, because those names did not accord with the secular character of the journal!

Sanchez has always heard he's a good cop, maybe even a decent man. The latter's more common than the former; power breeds abuse.

Sweet death in a vacuum, why can't anybody be uncomplicatedly evil in real life? Or uncomplicatedly good? Why are we all such a twist of good and bad decisions, selfishness and self-justification, altruism and desire?