Character Quotes

No man engaged in a work he does not like can preserve many saving illusionsabout himself. The distaste, the absence of glamour, extend from the occupation to the personality. It is only when ourappointed activities seem by a lucky accident to obey the particular earnestness of our temperament that we can taste the comfort of complete self-deception.

~ Joseph Conrad

A person’s authentic nature is a series of shifting, variegated planes that establish themselves as he relates to different people; it is created by and appears within the framework of his interpersonal relationships.

~ Philip K. Dick

Absolute power doesn't corrupt, but rather, reveals character.

~ Orrin Woodward

People will follow you when you build the character to follow through.

~ Orrin Woodward

I've always regarded it as a test of character to dislike the Kennedys. I don't really respect anyone who falls for Camelot.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Leaders do what ought to be done whether their deeds are known by thousands or known by no one.

~ Orrin Woodward

Character is beyond obligation. You could kick your shoes off at the door, flick your cigarete butts onto the sidewalk or talk only in slang, those things are forgivable if you have character

~ Novala Takemoto

He was all of those things, of course, but none of those things.

~ Marie Tillman

Enjoy being you. Have fun. And be different.

~ Fennel Hudson

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to drink with - even if he drank.

~ H. L. Mencken

Abstainer: a weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

~ Ambrose Bierce

He was not of an age but for all time.

~ Ben Jonson

As time requireth a man of marvellous mirth and past times and sometimes of as sad gravity as who say: a man for all seasons.

~ Robert Whittington

At every single moment of one's life one is going to be no less than what one has been.

~ Oscar Wilde

Dogs often remind us of the human ail-too human. Cats never.

~ Mason Cooley

Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.

~ Janis Joplin

Good breeding a union of kindness and independence.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good but not religious-good.

~ Thomas Hardy

He has not a single redeeming defect.

~ Benjamin Disraeli

And say to all the world This was a man!

~ Julius Caesar

Humility is no substitute for a good personality.

~ Fran Lebowitz

I am a deeply superficial person.

~ Andy Warhol

I believe that this neglected wounded inner child of the past is the major source of human misery.

~ John Bradshaw

I can't believe that out of 100 000 sperm you were the quickest.

~ Steven Pearl

I mean by this Sacrament an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

~ Book Of Common Prayer

I'm not hard I'm frightfully soft. But I will not be hounded.

~ Margaret Thatcher

If Ford Madox Ford were placed stark naked in a room totally empty he would contrive to turn it into a mess.

~ Ezra Pound

If I try to be like him who will be like me?

~ Yiddish Proverb

Individualism is rather like innocence there must be something unconscious about it.

~ Louis Kronenberger

It is thus with most of us we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

~ Eric Hoffer

Lord Ronald said nothing he flung himself from the room flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.

~ Stephen Leacock

Oozing charm from every pore He oiled his way around the floor.

~ Alan Jay Lerner

Self-denial is not a virtue it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

~ George Bernard Shaw

The first time you meet Winston [Churchill] you see all his faults and the rest of your life you spend in discovering his virtues.

~ Lady Constance Lytton

The proper time to influence the character of a child is about 100 years before he is born.

~ Dean William R. Inge

There is a secret person undamaged in every individual.

~ Paul Shepard

They are proud in humility proud that they are not proud.

~ Robert Burton

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seeded refusal of that which others have made of us.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

When they came to shoe the horses the beetle stretched out his leg.

~ English Proverb

It is native personality and that alone that endows a man to stand before presidents or generals or in any distinguished collection with aplomb -and not culture or any intellect whatever.

~ Walt Whitman