Quotes About Character

There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones.

Character actor' is a technical term denoting a clever stage performer who cannot act, and therefore makes an elaborate study of the disguises and stage tricks by which acting can be grotesquely simulated.

The prototypic Don Juan, invented early in the XVI century by a Spanish monk, was

OCTAVIUS. Even if it were so—and I don't admit it for a moment—it is out of the deadliest struggles that we get the noblest characters. TANNER. Remember that the next time you meet a grizzly bear or a Bengal tiger, Tavy. OCTAVIUS. I meant where there is love, Jack. TANNER. Oh, the tiger will love you.

It's all right, then. He's not going to act up to his principles.

The faults of the burglar are the qulaities of the financier.

At the end of the book you know Micawber, whereas you only know what has happened to David, and are not interested enough in him to wonder what his politics or religion might be if anything so stupendous as a religious or political idea, or a general idea of any sort, were to occur to him. He is tolerable as a child; but he never becomes a man, and might be left out of his own biography altogether but for his usefulness as a stage confidant

Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

Eines der traurigsten Dinge im Leben ist, dass ein Mensch viele gute Taten tun muss, um zu beweisen, dass er tüchtig ist, aber nur einen Fehler zu begehen braucht, um zu beweisen, dass er nichts taugt.

The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mould a child's character.

HE who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.

I went through the usual stages: imp, rascal, scalawag, whippersnapper. And, of course, after that it's just a small step to full-blown sociopath.

Whatever happened to "In victory, magnanimity; in defeat, defiance." So said Frederick the Great.

Today, I want to tell you about little Danny Pendejo.

Remember, work, well-done, does good to the man who did it. It makes him a better man

Blameless people are always the most exasperating.

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men's dispositions. I suppose he has some test by which he finds out whom Heaven cares for.

Our deeds determine us, as long as we determine our deeds

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, And what we have been makes us what we are

He was one of those men, and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit, entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not as a subject for panegyric.

He has got no good red blood in his body, said Sir James. No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass, and it was all semicolons and parenthesis, said Mrs. Cadwallader.

It is a mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world some day and then every rational satisfaction your nature that you deny now will assault like a savage appetite.