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.

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

Her air, her manners, all who saw admir'd; Courteous though coy, and gentle though retir'd; The joy of youth and health her eyes display'd, And ease of heart her every look convey'd.

Give me, instead of beauty's bust, A tender heart, a loyal mind, Which with temptation I could trust, Yet never linked with error find.

I've studied men from my topsy-turvy Close, and I reckon, rather true. Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy; Most, a dash between the two.

What a woman thinks of women is the test of her nature.

It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.

Nothing is a greater stranger to my breast, or a sin that my soul more abhors, than that black and detestable one, ingratitude.

A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.

We are defined by how we use our power.

It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.

Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from our foibles springs.

Even in art, there is no light without shadows, and no shadows are cast without some light. Even the shadow of Adolf Hitler is accompanied by some light.

Money doesn't change men, it merely unmasks them. If a man is naturally selfish or arrogant or greedy, the money brings that out, that's all.

What we do belongs to what we are; and what we are is what becomes of us.

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.

This is not a showman's job. I will not step out of character.

I learned about machinery, I learned how men behaved under pressure, and I learned about Americans.

Recollect that you must be a seaman to be an officer and also that you cannot be a good officer without being a gentleman.

Hamlet is every man's self-love with all its dreams realized. He wears all the crowns and carries every cross.

Bush is a natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oil-mongers. He hates music, football and sex, in no particular order, and he is no fun at all.

Some may never live, but the crazy never die.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women any more than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of one's living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.

I think that's what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There's no melodrama; there's no device, It's just about a human being.

Strangers who have seen Shaw face to face are wont to report their surprise at his gentleness and consideration, his willingness to listen and his complete lack of pose.

The return to solid values is always hard... Distress, panic, and hard times have marked our pathway in returning to solid values.

I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.

Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him.

Let there be nothing within thee that is not very beautiful and very gentle, and there will be nothing without thee that is not beautiful and softened by the spell of thy presence.

No temptation can gravitate to a man unless there is that is his heart which is capable of responding to it.

The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.

You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as you dominant aspiration.

The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

Clark Kent grew not only out of my private life, but also out of Joe Shuster's. As a high school student, I thought that someday I might become a reporter, and I had crushes on several attractive girls who either didn't know I existed or didn't care I existed.

To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten. The first 'second' is when you come out of the blocks. The next is when you look up and take your first few strides to attain gain position. By that time the race is actually about half over. The final 'second' - the longest slice of time in the world for an athlete - is that last half of the race, when you really bear down and see what you're made of. It seems to take an eternity, yet is all over before you can think what's happening.

In the end, it's extra effort that separates a winner from second place. But winning takes a lot more that that, too. It starts with complete command of the fundamentals. Then it takes desire, determination, discipline, and self-sacrifice. And finally, it takes a great deal of love, fairness and respect for your fellow man. Put all these together, and even if you don't win, how can you lose?

A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It's a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.

Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?

Neatness begets order; but from order to taste there is the same difference as from taste to genius, or from love to friendship.

Venerate four characters: the sanguine who has checked volatility and the rage for pleasure; the choleric who has subdued passion and pride; the phlegmatic emerged from indolence; and the melancholy who has dismissed avarice, suspicion and asperity.

Action, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell character.

The craftiest trickery are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart.

The jealous are possessed by a mad devil and a dull spirit at the same time.

There are three classes of men; the retrograde, the stationary and the progressive.

He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply.

I was a peaceful sedentary man, a lover of a quiet life, with no appetite for perils and commotions. But I was beginning to realise that I was very obstinate.

The most important thing for a young man is to establish a credit... a reputation, character.

Though with those streams he no resemblance hold, Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold; His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore, Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.

You roll back the stones, and you find slithering things. That is the world of Richard Nixon.

He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem.

There is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in our lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences; for it is through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and made perfect.