quotations about character
Our characters are the result of our conduct.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Character has more effect than anything else. Let a number of loud-talking men take up a particular question, and one man of character, of known integrity and beauty of soul, will outweigh them all in his influence.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Many people allow others to mold and influence their lives. These people are negative. Strong and positive people will mold their own character and make their circumstances and environment whatever they desire.
WALTER MATTHEWS
Human Life from Many Angles
Decided ends are sure signs of a decided character.
JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
Character calls forth character.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
There are sometimes beauties in a character which would never have appeared but for a defect, and defects which would never have appeared but for a beauty.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
Your character becomes distorted
In the quest for an identity
Why hide behind the truth
Of what you are?
NAPALM DEATH
"Blind to the Truth", From Enslavement to Obliteration
Deeds, not words, are the demonstration and test of character.
WILLIAM ARCHER
Play-making: A Manual of Craftsmanship
Character is power, character is influence, and he who has character, though he may have nothing else, has the means of being eminently useful, not only to his immediate friends, but to society, to the church of God and to the world.
PETER EDWARD KERN
Kern Genealogy
Character, like porcelain-ware, must be painted before it is glazed. There can be no change of color after it is burned in.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbours, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches! It is the study of nature, surely, that provits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a dustman up to Aeschylus, is God's work, and good to read, as all works of Nature are: but the silly animal is never content; is ever trying to fit itself into another shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not the courage to utter its own thoughts.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Extracts from the Writings of W. M. Thackeray
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
MALCOLM FORBES
attributed, It Happened Last Night, 1972
'Tis from high Life high Characters are drawn.
ALEXANDER POPE
Moral Essays
Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Neurotic's Notebook
Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a great building.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Character, like wine or cold tea in a bottle, takes its shape from the environment.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Every character is in some respects uniform, and in others inconsistent; and it is only by the study both of the uniformity and inconsistency, and a comparison of them with each other, that the knowledge of man is acquired.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
If one could only tear down his character, as old buildings are torn down, and build it up anew, as these are rebuilt! And so, in effect, it can be. A noble property of character is, that it is susceptible of improvement.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The tragedies of most of our modern poets fail in the rendering of character; and of poets in general this is often true.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
We become familiar with the outsides of men, as with the outsides of houses, and think we know them, while we are ignorant of so much that is passing within them.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought