Character Quotes

Take care of your reputation. It's your most valuable asset.

I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn't have said. Called him names I shouldn't have called him. I apologise for that. I'm sorry. It was all meant to promote the fight.

I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

Because I cannot flatter and look fair,Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,I must be held a rancorous enemy.

One thing about me is I try to be honest.

In our rough and rugged individualism, we think of gentleness as weakness, being soft and virtually spineless. Not so! Gentleness includes such enviable qualities as having strength under control, being calm and peaceful when surrounded by a heated atmosphere, emitting a soothing effect on those who may be angry or otherwise beside themselves, and possessing tact and gracious courtesy that causes others to retain their self-esteem and dignity. Instead of losing, the gentle gain. Instead of being ripped off and taken advantage of, they come out ahead!

To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.

Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body invented to cover the defects of the mind.

The most important part of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be trained to that sort of excellence in which, when he grows to manhood, he will have to be perfected.

I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows they are.

In a word, most bad attitudes are the result of selfishness.

It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.

Greatness of spirit is to bear finely both good fourtune and bad, honor and disgrace, and not to think highly of luxury or attention or power or victories in contests, and to possess a certain depth and magnitude of spirit.

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.

" ... It is not my desire to wound the feelings of any person with whom I am connected in family bonds. I may be a hypocrite," said Mr. Pecksniff, cuttingly, "but I am not a brute."

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.

A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

You never really know yourself until you see yourself under pressure.

Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.

Maybe it’s that I find it hard to forgive the follies and vices of others, or their offenses against me. My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever.

O lady, nobility is thine, and thy form is the reflection of thy nature!

The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.

Without courage you cannot practice any of the other virtues.

Courage is temperamental, scientific, ideal.

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange with-out heresy.

Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.

General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.

The heroic man does not pose; he leaves that for the man who wishes to be thought heroic.

What counts in a man or in a nation is not what the man or the nation can do, but what he or it actually does.

Trees die from the top”. No one should ever become a strategist unless he or she is willing to have his or her character serve as a model for subordinates

I am a patient listener, but opinionated to the point of stubbornness when my mind is made up.

I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.

Listen, punk. To me you're nothin' but dogshit, you understand? And a lot of things can happen to dogshit. It can be scraped up with a shovel off the ground. It can dry up and blow away in the wind. Or it can be stepped on and squashed. So take my advice and be careful where the dog shits ya!

All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.

Few there were who could change his courses by counsel. None by force.

Acting is different from stand-up. It gives you this ability to enter into another character, to create another person.

By all means tell the world how good you are - but do it with actions, not words.

May the Lord ordain that your son becomes a man, and never a coward!

Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.

Good and great are seldom in the same man.

The greatest ornament of an illustrious life is modesty and humility, which go a great way in the character even of the most exalted princes.

Great ambition is the passion of a great character.

Is it possible, I wonder, for a man to truly change? Or do character and habit form the immovable boundaries of our lives?

He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May.

A man is known by the books he reads.

There are three things which the superior man guards against. In youth ... lust. When he is strong ... quarrelsomeness. When he is old ... covetousness.

A learned person will become noble only when he or she has put into real practice what has been learned, instead of mere words.

Often a noble face hides filthy ways.

You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine. If you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder in that state of mind you had when you made it. If you spend for show, on building, or gardening, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. We are all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and things themselves are detective.

I mean, Hank Paulson is in there [ Treasury] at the wrong time, probably shouldn't have taken the job. He's a friend of mine. But he knows markets, he knows corporations' work, he knows money, and he's got the interests of the country at heart.

If a man withdraws his mind from the love of beauty, and applies it as sincerely to the love of the virtuous; if, in serving his parents, he can exert his utmost strength; if, in serving his prince, he can devote his life; if in his intercourse with his friends, his words are sincere - although men say that he has not learned, I will certainly say that he has.

... Arthur Gride, whose bleared eyes gloated only over the outward beauties, and were blind to the spirit which reigned within, evinced - a fantastic kind of warmth certainly, but not exactly that kind of warmth of feeling which the contemplation of virtue usually inspires.

He certainly is very agreeable, and I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stupider person.

All the world is good and agreeable in your eyes.

Character produces endurance and persistence when the going gets tough, and life truly is an endurance race, not a sprint.

Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity - I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only a euphemism for folly.

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.