Quotes About Character

What defines us isn't how we behave when things are good, Andrew, but how we respond when they aren't.

Aristotle is reputed to have said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit

Every diamond has the ability to shine when there is someone to recognize its good facets and inhibit its flaws.

Clothes don't hide the soul.

The mask hides the face, but the attitude reveals the intention of the soul."

Conscience cannot convince self-esteem of bad character.

The Sage observes conscience and not appearance.

The scarecrow has its own style."

To be a hero you need attitude, not fantasy."

your greatness will be made possible through the extremes of your personality—the very extremes that sometimes make for campfire satire and legendary stories.

Children are ingenuous. They are also blessed with uncanny ability to read a person's character instantly. Even though they are inexperienced and unsophisticated, they often know instinctively who can be trusted and who is the charlatan.

He was some kind of a man... What does it matter what you say about people?" -- Marlene Dietrich's character in Touch Of Evil, originally written by Whit Masterson as Badge Of Evil. One of the best closing sequences you'll see in classical Hollywood

A man without mysticism becomes a monster.

Self-respect cannot be hunted. It cannot be purchased. It is never for sale. It cannot be fabricated out of public relations. It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when e suddenly realize that, knowing the good, we have done it; knowing the beautiful, we have served it; knowing the truth we have spoken it.

My mother taught me that when you stand in the truth and someone tells a lie about you, don't fight it.

The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.

The harder the life, the finer the person

The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.

Wilhelm Reich identified "armor" as the sum total of typical character attitudes, which an individual develops as a blocking against his emotional excitations, resulting in rigidity of the body, lack of emotional contact, "deadness". Functionally identical to muscular armor (chronic muscular spasms)

The institution of marriage would be damaged. Ideologically, marital morality must be kept intact, in spite of the contradictory facts of sexual life, because marriage is the backbone of the authoritarian family, which in turn is the breeding ground for authoritarian ideologies and character structure.

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause. The mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

It is an absolutely vain endeavor to attempt to reconstruct or even comprehend the nature of a human being by simply knowing the forces which have acted upon him. However deeply we should like to penetrate, however close we seem to be drawing to truth, one unknown quantity eludes us: man's primordial energy, his original self, that personality which was given him with the gift of life itself. On it rests man's true freedom; it alone determines his real character.

To judge a man means nothing other than to ask: What content does he give to the form of humanity? What concept should we have of humanity if he were its only representative?

The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?