Character Quotes

Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine; she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments, but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature; nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original; she used to repeat sounding phrases from books; she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment, but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her

~ Charlotte Brontë

At the same time believers realise that the defects they see in one another are tests from Allah. For this reason they don't call attention to these defects, but compensate for them by acting positively. They carefully avoid the slightest action, facial expression or word that would suggest ridicule.

~ Harun Yahya

The twentieth-century conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of the spirit and character – with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest.

~ Russell Kirk

As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about. But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?

~ Milan Kundera

There are, basically, three kinds of people: the unsuccessful, the temporarily successful, and those who become and remain successful. The difference is character.

~ Jon Hunstman

Cavenaugh rubbed his hands together and smiled his sunny smile.'I like that idea. It's reassuring. If we can have no secrets, it means we can't, after all, go so far afield as we might,' he hesitated, 'yes, as we might.'Eastman looked at him sourly. 'Cavenaugh, when you've practiced law in New York for twelve years, you find that people can't go far in any direction, except-' He thrust his forefinger sharply at the floor.'Even in that direction, few people can do anything out of the ordinary. Our range is limited. Skip a few baths, and we become personally objectionable. The slightest carelessness can rot a man's integrity or give him ptomaine poisoning. We keep up only be incessant cleansing operations, of mind and body. What we call character, is held together by all sorts of tacks and strings and glue. (Consequences)

~ Willa Cather

Osby wasn't considered the smartest man in Eads County. But the no one . . . knew him well enough to realize that he wasn't all that far from it either.

~ Josh Weil

His character is like an emerald—multifaceted and enhanced by inclusions.

~ Melika Dannese Lux

He's the navigator, he could probably find you a route to Hawaii underwater.

~ Jocelyn White

I could scream abuse at him all day long; he wouldn't mind at all. It's me he wants, my look, my outside; not my emotions or my mind or my soul or even my body. Not anything human.

~ John Fowles

Look beyond the talker, and uncover the stalker. If the mind is darkened with character disEASE, the behavior will symptomatically follow...those whose mentality becomes infected by their obvious blight, easily become the host targets of their contagion.

~ Tracey Bond

Be a person of character people can count on.

~ Amber Hurdle

I never want to be the type of person remembered for vanity or materialism, only by the content of my true character that comes from within.

~ Pauline Seaport

Some things are worse than death... If a man lives, he must still live with himself.

~ Timothy B. Tyson

There are few people who are mature enough to uphold moral and ethical values; who have a remarkable character; who are honest and sincere; who cultivate and harbor loyalty, devotion and dedication by rendering a striking admiration.

~ Sandeep N. Tripathi

Don’t lose yourself in the fog of normality.

~ Fennel Hudson

A man's character is only formed after the impressions of childhood and early youth have become blended with the indefinable and hidden influences both atavistic and of more immediate heredity. When, like soft clay, the newborn human spirit has been first fashioned by the firm hand of the modeller and then allowed to set and harden, this is the moment of the final character emerges, fixed for life. While the part played by heredity will always remains elusive and uncertain, the influence of a man's early years are not difficult to unfurl if we know where to seek and consider seriously what we find.

~ Miklós Bánffy

It seems likely to me now that the very element in my character that took possession of me there on top of that mountain, the fierce independence that was suddenly mine, to remain inside me no matter how it scared me when I tumbled, was an inheritance. Indeed it was my chief inheritance from my mother, who was braver. Yet, while she knew that independent spirit so well, it was what she agonizingly tried to protect me from, in effort to warn me against. It was what she shared, it made the strongest bond between us and the strongest tension. To grow up is to fight for it, to grow old is to lose it after having possessed it.

~ Eudora Welty

Situation after situation, shape your attitude! Situation after situation change your character!

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

All men can see these tacticsWhereby I master,But out of which evolve profitsNone can see the character.Strategy without characterIs the slowest route to profits,Tactics without strategyIs the noise before loses

~ Amah Lambert

We discern a grand force in the lover which he lacks whilst a free man, but there is a breadth of vision in the free man which in the lover we vainly seek.

~ Thomas Hardy

Damn, she just kept on surprising him. First with her beauty. Then with the illustrations. He'd been forced to accept that there was more to her character than he'd gleaned from her letters, but none of it fell too far outside the borders of his carefully mapped mental territory labeled Madeline. She was privileged, sheltered, intelligent, curious, and far too crafty.But this...This was different. As he watched her with the tenants' children, his conception of her pushed against its established boundaries. He was forced to add new descriptors to his list. Ones like generous and responsible and protective.

~ Tessa Dare

Every country is a battlefield for the struggle between honest and dishonest, between honourable and honourless people! At the end, the character of that country will be determined by whichever group wins!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Playing safe, hiding among the masses, will rarely get you noticed.

~ Fennel Hudson

Your character is your conduct.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

What I took out of them was that character was measured by facing up to difficult situations and that a hero was a man who would not break even under the most trying circumstances.

~ Nelson Mandela

What do I and a diamond have in common? We are tough, brilliant, and carbon based entities which evolved into something better under immense pressure, tribulation, and trials.

~ Donavan Nelson Butler

The disappointments, the injustices, and the unfair treatment of others can never make me become a bitter person, far from it. It rather makes me become more and more generous and compassionate. Because down in my heart, am very much at peace with myself.

~ Nurudeen Ushawu

External beauty is what the world sees in you but success comes to you because of your internal beauty.

~ Seema Brain Openers

If you have assumed any character beyond your strength, you have both demeaned yourself ill in that and quitted one which you might have supported.

~ Epictetus

It’s better to be individual than a clone of someone else.

~ Fennel Hudson

Failing to fulfill your responsibilities is not only a reflection of your priorities, but also your integrity. Your actions define your character not the words you utter.

~ Tyconis D. Allison Ty

As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.

~ James Madison

It takes a man of unusual character to openly confront his own shortcomings. It’s so much more convenient to blame others.

~ Raymond E. Feist

...[T]he really important thing is not to live, but to live well... [a]nd to live well means the same thing as to live honourably or rightly...

~ Socrates

She looked not so much composed as drawn inward. She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and vulnerable at the same time.

~ Azar Nafisi

Sentiments that glorify humanity know no racial distinction.

~ Abhijit Naskar

What you think you are inside doesn’t matter, Morgan.” She hastened over to sit beside him. “In the end, it’s what a man does, how he acts, that shows his character. And I’ve never seen you act anything but nobly.”He lifted his face to hers, astonished at how fiercely she defended him, even after knowing the darkest secrets of his soul. “How can you be so sure of my character when I’m not even sure of it myself?”“I can’t help it,” she said, her voice trembling. She dropped her eyes to the bench, turmoil showing in her sweet features. “I love you. And loving someone means believing in them.”She loved him? Despite knowing what he was? A fierce joy seized him before he could prevent it. He caught her by the chin and forced her to look at him, but her clear blue eyes held no hint of deception. “God help you if you don’t mean that, ma belle ange.

~ Sabrina Jeffries

Call up the ever-pure, the effulgent and the ever-radiant character of true humanism in yourself and in others, and no racism shall have the power to thrive in such society even for a few seconds.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Tolstoy was a Caucasian, Gandhi was an Asian, and Martin Luther King Jr. was a Negro, yet all of their hearts were inspired by the one idea of nonviolent resistance. King received it from Gandhi, Gandhi received it from Tolstoy, and Tolstoy received it from Christ.

~ Abhijit Naskar