1,298 Character Quotes

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.

The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it's on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.

At the root of the assault on our liberties is, in fact, an assault on our character--an assault that assumes that we are not good enough to be free, and that aims to make sure that we are no longer strong enough, courageous enough, disciplined enough to be a free people.

The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness.

Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his profession.

When young Mark Robarts was leaving college, his father might well declare that all men began to say all good things to him, and to extol his fortune in that he had a son blessed with so excellent a disposition.

Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

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

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

I have no idols. I admire work, dedication and competence.

If I could make only one wish for a child, I'd wish him the quality of lovingness.

People remain what they are even if their faces fall apart.

I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.

Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies.

When they asked Jack Benny to do something for the Actor's Orphanage - he shot both his parents and moved in.

I'm not as soft or as generous a person as I would be if the world hadn't changed me.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

There are very many characteristics which go into making a model civil servant. Prominent among them are probity, industry, good sense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, many deference to superior officers, and many consideration for inferiors.

Charlie Brown is the one person I identify with. C.B. is such a loser. He wasn't even the star of his own Halloween special.

As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist.

It matters more what's in a woman's face than what's on it.

A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful.

You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man's actions are, such must be his spirit.

Honesty prospers in every condition of life.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Patience is the mother of will.

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.

Associate yourself with Men of good Quality if you Esteem your own Reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad Company.

Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.

It is always the secure who are humble.

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.

Whatever the word 'great' means, Dickens was what it means.

A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard.

When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.

Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.

'He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles. '

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny - it is the light that guides your way.

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

Hamlet is egotism as it appears to itself, and Don Quixote is egotism as it appears to the detached observer.

I don't invent characters because the Almightly has already invented millions: Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but learn how to read them.

We are accustomed to the artist scoundrel or specialist in vice, and unaccustomed to the creator in whom passion and reason and moral integrity hold in balance. But greatness of intellect and feeling, or soul and conduct - magnanimity, in short - does occur; it is not a myth for boy scouts, and its reality is important, if only to give us the true range of the term 'human,' which we so regularly define by its lower reaches.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply, by the lives they lead.

I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.

It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it's close.

You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.

Youth, what man's age is like to be doth show, We may our ends by our beginnings know.

She has more goodness in her little finger, than he has in his whole body.

'I've always thought Prince Charming in Cinderella was the most boring role; I'd rather be the Wicked Witch.'

We repeat again: strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one's balance in spite of them. Even with the violence of emotion, judgment and principle must still function like a ship's compass, which records the slightest variations however rough the sea.

You can't help it but you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed - so you were a good man just the same.

I wanted to know the best of the life of one (Muhammad) who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind. I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.

Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.

I am a great mayor. I am an upstanding Christian man. I am an intelligent man. I am a deeply educated man. I am a humble man.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.

Pilgrim's Progress, about a man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.

The ones who count are those persons who- though they may be of little renown- respond to and are responsible for the continuation of the living spirit.

The power of the Latin classic is in character, that of the Greek is in beauty. Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly.

Eutrapelia. 'A happy and gracious flexibility,' Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians...lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners.

What do you despise? By this you are truly known.

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, - mettle and bottom.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character, - a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.

Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanour; honourable himself, and in his judgement of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man....such a man is a true gentleman.

Peace is not something you wish for; It's something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.

'We send our [peacekeepers] off to some disputed zone, full of local intrigue and power blocs and uncertainty and danger, and they are supposed to save lives not with their weapons, but through their competence and their character. And they do it.'

I'm not smart enough to lie.

He who is void of virtuous Attachments in private Life, is, or very soon will be void of all Regard for his Country. There is seldom an Instance of a Man guilty of betraying his Country, who had not before lost the Feeling of moral Obligations in his private Connections.

The insolence of wealth will creep out.

And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin Is pride that apes humility.

I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than Divinity, Pride, or Avarice in others.

Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others.

My character is self-important, poorly informed, well-intentioned, but an idiot: So we said, 'Let's give him a promotion.'