Quotes About Character

It's what you do that makes your soul.

Everything we do tells something about us.

If ever a man existed who had every right to be puffed up with his own conceit, Rosellen thought, it was Wynn in evening clothes.

Perhaps better we not obscure the idea that happiness and misery, kindness and greed, and good works and bad deeds are within the capacities of us all, not merely a select few.

Cohen was so shallow it was almost a talent.

You can't judge people for the mistakes they make. You judge them for how they fix those mistakes.

Annie Biggs was her

Virtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it, but it can sometimes be a little depressing.

when she thought it over, Jane decided that she was really much more like Emma Woodhouse.

Prudence disliked being called 'Miss Bates'; if she resembled any character in fiction, it was certainly not poor silly Miss Bates.

Pride is a thin substitute for sincere, openhearted dignity.

Ivo had grown more and more like one of those characters in his books who are always groaning about their miserable fate in helplessly loving someone unworthy of their love. Maugham never says much about what that's like for the poor old unworthy object. I could have told him. It's not exactly uplifting for the self-image.

The only really detestable character in Chaucer's company of Canterbury pilgrims is the Pardoner with his stringy locks, his eunuch's hairless skin, his glaring eyes like a hare's, and his brazen acknowledgment of the tricks and deceits of his trade.

He was the most persuasive speaker, less for his words than character behind them. He made every listener feel he had done his best to master every aspect of this question, who has been driven by logic to arrive at certain conclusions, and who is disguising from us no argument on either side.

He had become, through a combination of heritage and character, a keeper of the national conscience.

Fate as a character in legend represents the fulfillment of man's expectations of himself.

Honor wears different coats to different eyes,

Cornwallis was a man who could have thrust his hand in a flame if necessary, but not a man to organize the logistics and arrangements of a large campaign with a likely risk of failure. The smooth face in the Gainsborough portrait with no lines of thought or of frowns or of laughter—with no lines at all—tells as much. It is a face composed by a life of comfort and satisfaction without any need of desperate attempts. As

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on [office]," he wrote to a friend, "a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Success can make you go one of two ways. It can make you a prima donna - or it can smooth the edges, take away the insecurities, let the nice things come out.

Are children then to be neglected? Surely not: but having given them the instruction and accomplishments which their situation in life requires, let us reject superfluous solicitude, and trust that their characters will form themselves from the spontaneous influence of good examples, and circumstances which impel them to useful action.

There is no one quality gives so much dignity to a character, as consistency of conduct. Even if a man's pursuits be wrong and unjustifiable, yet if they are prosecuted with steadiness and vigor, we cannot withhold our admiration.

Evil eyes look out for occasion, therefore give none.

At college age, you can tell who is best at taking tests and going to school, but you can't tell who the best people are. That worries the hell out of me.