Quotes

Quotes about Character


Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

It is a characteristic of all movements and crusades that the psychopathic element rises to the top.

Robert Lindner

The main characteristics of effective leadership are intelligence, integrity or loyalty, mystique, humor, discipline, courage, self sufficieny and confidence. -James L. Fisher.

James L. Fisher

The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force.

John Fitzgerald Voltaire

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character. - Among My Books, 1870.

James Russell Lowell

One can acquire everything in solitude except character. - On Love, 1822.

Vladimir Stendhal

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; When health is lost, something is lost; When character is lost, all is lost!

Michael Eyquen de Motto

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.

German Motto

The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. And the habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care. And let it spring from love, born out of concern for all beings. . -Buddha.

Buddha

Never chase a lie. Let it alone, and it will run itself to death. I can work out a good character much faster than anyone can lie me out of it.

Lyman Beecher

A man's own manner and character is what most becomes him.

Margaret Cicero

The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.

Peter De Vries

I've been in a lot of trouble and come out of it. I think it shows a lot of good character.

Stefan Edberg

Man could not live if he were entirely impervious to sadness. Many sorrows can be endured only by being embraced, and the pleasure taken in them naturally has a somewhat melancholy character. So, melancholy is morbid only when it occupies too much place in life; but it is equally morbid for it to be wholly excluded from life.

Emile Durkheim

I've never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn't choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them.

Juliette Binoche

When one is rising, standing, walking, doing something, stopping, one should constantly concentrate one's mind on the act and the doing of it, not one ones' relation to the act or its character or value... One should simply practice concentration of the mind on the act itself, understanding it to be an expedient means for attaining tranquility of mind, realization, insight, and wisdom.

Germaine Ashvaghosha

Given the cultural barriers to intersex conversation, the amazing thing is that we would even expect women and men to have anything to say to each other for more than ten minutes at a stretch. The barriers are ancient—perhaps rooted, as some paleontologist may soon discover, in the contrast between the occasional guttural utterances exchanged in male hunting bands and the extended discussions characteristic of female food-gathering groups.

Barbara Ehrenreich

In this society, the norm of masculinity is phallic aggression. Male sexuality is, by definition, intensely and rigidly phallic. A man's identity is located in his conception of himself as the possessor of a phallus; a man's worth is located in his pride in phallic identity. The main characteristic of phallic identity is that worth is entirely contingent on the possession of a phallus. Since men have no other criteria for worth, no other notion of identity, those who do not have phalluses are not recognized as fully human.

Andrea Dworkin

Minds are like parachutes-- they only function when open. Thomas Dewar "Doublethink" means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. •George Orwell The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. •Henri L. Bergson Hold up to him his better self, his real self that can dare and do and win out . . . People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts. •Eleanor H. Porter The bigger a man's head gets, the easier it is to fill his shoes. •Henry Courtney A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. •Ralph Waldo Emerson Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind. •Leonardo Da Vinci A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye. •Carolyn Wells Craftiness is a quality in the mind and a vice in the character. •S. Dubay A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. •Winston Churchill The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water. •Sigmund Freud A feeble body weakens the mind. •Jean Jacques Rousseau Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable. •Buckminster Fuller A man's mind will very gradually refuse to make itself up until it is driven and compelled by emergency. •Anthony Trollope We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe. •Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably. •Jean de LaBruyere Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive. •Napoleon Hill A nation that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan. •Martin Luther King, Jr. A vacant mind invites dangerous inmates, as a deserted mansion tempts wandering outcasts to enter and take up their abode in its desolate apartments. •Nicholas Hilliard A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind. •Eugene Ionesco Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as you can change your beliefs. •Maxwell Maltz Some minds are like concrete, all mixed up and permanently set. •Source Unknown The mind is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not discreetly how to use it. •Michel de Montaigne If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. •Lyall Watson Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace. •Elbert Hubbard The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it. •Colin Wilson Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.

George Orwell

Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.

Eleanor Roosevelt

At any age it does us no harm to look over our past shortcomings and plan to improve our characters and actions in the coming year.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Be and not seem. A man is related to all nature. The less government we have the better. Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. To be great is to be misunderstood. Every man is in some way my superior. A man is a god in ruins. Life is a festival only to the wise. Knowledge is the only elegance. We boil at different degrees. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it. We learn geology the morning after the earthquake. What is the hardest thing in the world? To think. Accept your genius and say what you think. Make yourself necessary to somebody. The only way to have a friend is to be one. Insist on yourself; never imitate. Music causes us to think eloquently. To live without duties is obscene. It is not length of life, but depth of life. The greatest homage to truth is to use it. The only reward of virtue is virtue. Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path. We become what we think about all day long. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. There is no knowledge that is not power. Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies. Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before. Heroism feels and never reasons and is therefore always right. A good indignation brings out all one's powers. A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect. Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy. People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. My chief want in life is someone who shall make me do what I can. Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind. We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables. This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. The only sin we never forgive each other is difference of opinion. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before. Judge of your natural character by what you do in dreams. What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul's emphasis is always right. The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. The only sin we never forgive each other is difference of opinion. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others. A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist. Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real. Perhaps they are. The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Our faith comes in moments, yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences. We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is merely through a transfer of idolatry. What lies beyond us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new. To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age. Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?. The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature. To think is to act. We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of somebody's enthusiasm. It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances. If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds. There is no beautifier of complexion or form of behavior like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us. This gives force to the strong - that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action. -U.S. Poet.

U.s. Poet

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

Edward G. Bulwer-lytton

Money can't buy real friendship—friendship must be earned. Money can't buy a clear conscience—square dealing is the price tag. Money can't buy the glow of good health—right living is the secret. Money can't buy happiness—happiness is a mental condition and one may be as happy in a cottage as in a mansion. Money can't buy sunsets, songs of wild birds and the music of the wind in the trees—these are as free as the air we breath. Money can't buy inward peace—peace is the result of a constructive philosophy in life. Money can't buy a good character—good character is achieved through decent habits of private living and wholesome dealings in our open contacts with our fellow men.

Count Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi or Anonymous

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