Character Quotes

Internal character: how you behave when no one is watching.

~ Bill Courtney

Sex is sacred if performed as a culmination of love, if done just to satisfy the lust, it indeed dents the character.

~ Girdhar Joshi

People lack morals, good moral character is important in every aspect of your life. Honesty and Integrity opens the door. Your character allows others to see you for who you truly are. Make your first impression a lasting impression. Ironically it may be your last impression

~ Amaka Imani Nkosazana

People become desensitized to many things going on around them. It is because they always see it on the tv, hear it on the radio, read or watch it on the internet, hear about it at work etc. Then immoral acts are tuned to a deaf ear. Then no one wants to take action or speak up for what's right. Break the cycle and have moral character.

~ Amaka Imani Nkosazana

You make the choice concerning who you associate with on a daily basis. Whenever there are people around you who continually gossip or nag, you have the option to entertain that nonsense or leave it alone. The choice is yours. Most of the time people you hang around are a reflection of yourself. We often times attract people with like-minded personalities. So, if you enjoy that type of company it says much about your character.

~ Amaka Imani Nkosazana

Let today be the day you control your emotions. Don't let them get the best of you. Whatever you are feeling right now should not be overwhelming. Don't allow others to dampen your spirit. You are entitled to enjoy peace.

~ Amaka Imani Nkosazana

The most important quality in the man you decide to marry should be the ability to make you laugh. Beauty fades, careers end, money comes and goes, religions change, children grow up and move away, spouses get sick, struggles happen, family members die, senility sets in when your older, but the ability to make you giggle every day is the most precious gift God can give you to get through all of it.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Personal discipline is a most powerful character quality and one worthy of dedicating your life to nurturing.

~ Elizabeth George

Lots of people use good character and moral standing as a brand name. They know it's what people like, they want people to like them, so they wear it as one would wear a quality brand shirt. Putting it on in the morning and taking it off at the end of the day. Saying all the things they know people want to hear. If they were the very last person on Earth, there would be no reason for them to be of good character, because nobody would see it.

~ C. Joybell C.

Many people define who they are, based upon what the world sees when it looks at them. They build themselves with their foundation set upon the perceptions of others. Do others think they are good, kind, smart, loving? But I define who I am, based upon the person who looks back at me in the mirror. If you were the only person on Earth, with nobody to see you, know your name, or ever be aware of your existence; what kind of person would you be? Live for the person who looks back at you in the mirror and be that person even if you are the last human being on Earth. Too many people live for what the world will think and will see; too few people live for their own soul. Are you smart, successful, got lots of super ideas? But those are not important questions. This is the most important question: do you know how to love? I do not care if nobody on Earth were to know my name; do I know my own soul? Do I know how to love? These are the questions I ask myself.

~ C. Joybell C.

The strength of a man is in his character. A strong man is great man of wisdom who understands, his top priority is to his family.

~ Ellen J. Barrier

Children are excellent judges of character, you know

~ Mohsin Hamid

Parents in the early half of the twentieth century were primarily concerned with the development of character in their children. They wanted to be certain that their children were ready to cope with adversity, for it was surely coming to them one day whether in personal or national life. The development of character involves self-discipline and often sacrifice of one's own desires for the good of self and others. Montessori education, developed in this historical period, reflects this emphasis on the formation of the child's character. However, parents today are more likely to say their primary wish for their children is that they be happy. In pursuit of this goal they indulge their children, often unconsciously, to a degree that is startling to previous generations. All parents need to remember that true happiness comes through having character and discipline, and living a life of meaningful contribution -- not by having and doing whatever you wish.

~ Paula Polk Lillard

Children are ingenuous. They are also blessed with uncanny ability to read a person's character instantly. Even though they are inexperienced and unsophisticated, they often know instinctively who can be trusted and who is the charlatan.

~ Wess Stafford

Truth is stranger than fiction because lies are much more convincing but the truth always comes out no matter how long it takes.

~ Sanjo Jendayi

But hereto is replied that the poets give names to men they write of, which argueth a conceit of an actual truth, and so, not being true, proveth a falsehood. And doth the lawyer lie then, when, under the names of John of the Stile, and John of the Nokes, he putteth his case? But that is easily answered: their naming of men is but to make their picture the more lively, and not to build any history. Painting men, they cannot leave men nameless. We see we cannot play at chess but that we must give names to our chess-men; and yet, me thinks, he were a very partial champion of truth that would say we lied for giving a piece of wood the reverend title of a bishop.

~ Philip Sidney

Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades.

~ Diana Gabaldon

The problem lies not with genre but with formula, which consists of seeing genre conventions as restrictions rather than mere guidelines, ends in themselves rather than possibilities.

~ David Corbett

To write is to reveal oneself.When I write something, fiction or non-fiction, I do not expect you to accept what I write, nor to agree with what I propose.I expect you to spend at least a tenth of a second to think about it - may be not about the characters, nor about the piece, but at least about the idea.

~ Sanhita Baruah

The Adventure called and I followed with my thumb like a character being written by an intractable author. Which, of course, I was.

~ Sol Luckman

The writer's characters must stand before us with a wonderful clarity, such continuous clarity that nothing they do strikes us as improbable behavior for just that character, even when the character's action is, as sometimes happens, something that came as a surprise to the writer himself. We must understand, and the writer before us must understand, more than we know about the character; otherwise neither the writer nor the reader after him could feel confident of the character's behavior when the character acts freely.

~ John Gardner

As in the universe every atom has an effect, however minuscule, on every other atom, so that to pinch the fabric of Time and Space at any point is to shake the whole length and breadth of it, so in fiction every element has effect on every other, so that to change a character's name from Jane to Cynthia is to make the fictional ground shudder under her feet.

~ John Gardner

it's through the simple things in life, through its games, when our minds mature the most and we grow knowledgeable. It's also when the cloth masks of our outer, false personalities are torn asunder, and we are able to see every last blemish of a man's genuine character that they hide beneath... no matter how dark or obscene it may be.

~ Evan Meekins

People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions.

~ Michelle M. Pillow

We don’t have no say, ‘cause we was an afterthought. He yanked us up out o’ man’s ribs, but He made man out the Earth. He made him out the dirt and the mud and made him out the world, so man is the world. Women…women just a part o’ men.” Elaine snubbed the cigarette out, tapped the dark leather case on the edge of the table and I watched as another slim, white stick slid free.

~ Laura A. Lord

Qualities too elevated often unfit a man for society. We don't bring ingots with us to market, we take silver or small change.

~ Chamfort

As for the majority, it is not so much race as it is political affiliation that really divides it today. What was once an issue of physical difference is now one of intellectual difference. Men have yet to master disagreeing without flashing all their frustrations that come with it; the conservative will throw half-truths while the liberal will throw insults. Combine these and what do you get? A dishonest mockery of a country.

~ Criss Jami

He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a Cretan-a system of ethics above all others calculated to win popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society.

~ Thomas Hardy

A society that has no wrongs will soon have no rights.

~ Orrin Woodward

We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.

~ Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars.

~ James Hillman

Don’t focus on the action, focus on the mentality behind the action. Analyzing the mentality will help us differentiate between a one-time error and a long-term character flaw.

~ Izey Victoria Odiase

Few endeavors, if any at all, I find to be inherently mature or inherently immature. Maturity is neither defined by one's particular preferences nor by one's particular activities; rather, it is defined by the strength of one's character.

~ Criss Jami

We all do things in a certain individual way, according to our temperaments. Every human act — no matter how large or how small— is a direct expression of a man's personality, and bears the inevitable impress of his nature.

~ S.s. Van Dine

That which does not come by logic, does not leave by logic.

~ Raheel Farooq

From what deep springs of character our personal philosophies issue, we cannot be sure. In philosophers themselves we seem always able to notice some deep internal correspondence between the man and his philosophy. Are our philosophies, then, merely the inevitable outcome of the body of fate and personal circumstance that is thrust upon each of us? Or are these beliefs the means by which we freely create ourselves as the persons we become? Here, at the very outset, the question of freedom already hovers in the background.

~ William Barrett

IT IS NOT ABOUT SYMPATHY OR LIKEABILITY, EITHER. EMPATHY IS ABOUT THE TRANSLATION OF FEELING.

~ Film Crit Hulk!

We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.

~ Walter Bagehot

Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.

~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Strength of character means the ability to overcome resentment against others, to hide hurt feelings, and to forgive quickly.

~ Lawrence G. Lovasik