Quotes About Character

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.

It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse.

Without virtue, man is most unholy and savage, and worst in regard to sex and eating.

We acquire a particular quality by acting in a particular way.

The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place.

The legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy.

Moral experience—the actual possession and exercise of good character—is necessary truly to understand moral principles and profitably to apply them.

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.

We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.

The man who does not enjoy doing noble actions is not a good man at all.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances. — Aristotle

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids.

And so the good man ought to be Self-loving: because by doing what is noble he will have advantage himself and will do good to others: but the bad man ought not to be, because he will harm himself and his neighbours by following low and evil passions. In the case of the bad man, what he ought to do and what he does are at variance, but the good man does what he ought to do, because all Intellect chooses what is best for itself and the good man puts himself under the direction of Intellect.

Virtue is a greater good than honour; and one might perhaps accordingly suppose that virtue rather than honour is the end of the political life.

Wisdom or intelligence and prudence are intellectual, liberality and temperance are moral virtues.

habits of virtue and vice are caused by acts

Excellence is an Art Won by Training and Habit. We do not act rightly Because we have Virtue and Excellence, But rather, we have Virtue and Excellence Because we act rightly.

Each type of activity produces the corresponding sort of person

There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and

good character is the indispensable condition and chief determinant of happiness, itself the goal of all human doing. The end of all action, individual or collective, is the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Actions which produce [virtue] are those which increase it, and also, if differently performed, destroy it.

Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

For 'activity in conformity with virtue' involves virtue.