CHARACTER QUOTES II

quotations about character

Your character becomes distorted
In the quest for an identity
Why hide behind the truth
Of what you are?

NAPALM DEATH

"Blind to the Truth", From Enslavement to Obliteration


Our characters are the result of our conduct.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics


Character has more effect than anything else. Let a number of loud-talking men take up a particular question, and one man of character, of known integrity and beauty of soul, will outweigh them all in his influence.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


Many people allow others to mold and influence their lives. These people are negative. Strong and positive people will mold their own character and make their circumstances and environment whatever they desire.

WALTER MATTHEWS

Human Life from Many Angles


Decided ends are sure signs of a decided character.

JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER

Aphorisms on Man


Character calls forth character.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.

MALCOLM FORBES

attributed, It Happened Last Night, 1972


Character is power, character is influence, and he who has character, though he may have nothing else, has the means of being eminently useful, not only to his immediate friends, but to society, to the church of God and to the world.

PETER EDWARD KERN

Kern Genealogy


There are sometimes beauties in a character which would never have appeared but for a defect, and defects which would never have appeared but for a beauty.

FULKE GREVILLE

Maxims


Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.

MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN

The Neurotic's Notebook


Deeds, not words, are the demonstration and test of character.

WILLIAM ARCHER

Play-making: A Manual of Craftsmanship


Every character is in some respects uniform, and in others inconsistent; and it is only by the study both of the uniformity and inconsistency, and a comparison of them with each other, that the knowledge of man is acquired.

FULKE GREVILLE

Maxims


By nothing do men show their character more than by the things they laugh at.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbours, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches! It is the study of nature, surely, that provits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a dustman up to Aeschylus, is God's work, and good to read, as all works of Nature are: but the silly animal is never content; is ever trying to fit itself into another shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not the courage to utter its own thoughts.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

Extracts from the Writings of W. M. Thackeray


Character, like porcelain-ware, must be painted before it is glazed. There can be no change of color after it is burned in.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a great building.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Essays


It is an error to suppose that no man understands his own character. Most persons know even their failings very well, only they persist in giving them names different from those usually assigned by the rest of the world; and they compensate for this mistake by naming, at first sight, with singular accuracy, those very same failings in others.

ARTHUR HELPS

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd


The reasons which any man offers to you for his own conduct, betray his opinion of your character.

ARTHUR HELPS

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd


Character, like wine or cold tea in a bottle, takes its shape from the environment.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


We become familiar with the outsides of men, as with the outsides of houses, and think we know them, while we are ignorant of so much that is passing within them.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought