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This is the essence of character: the will and ability to put principle into action. (Scott Allen)
I was a very unpleasant young man. If I met the young Ingmar today I'd say, 'You're very talented and I'll try to help you, but I don't want anything else to do with you.' (Ingmar Bergman)
It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men. (Jean de La Bruyere)
Fine natures are like fine poems; a glance at the first two lines suffices for a guess into the beauty that waits you if you read on. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)
The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back. (Abigail Van Buren)
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mould and chisel and complete a character. (Samuel Butler)
Hard conditions of life are indispensable to bringing out the best in human personality. (Alexis Carrel)
Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word. (Earl of Chesterfield)
Character cannot be summoned at the moment of crisis if it has been squandered by years of compromise and rationalization. The only testing ground for the heroic is the mundane. The only preparation for that one profound decision which can change a life, or even a nation, is those hundreds of half-conscious, self-defining, seemingly insignificant decisions made in private. Habit is the daily battleground of character. (Dan Coats)
When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves. (Confucius)
There is no index of character so sure as the voice. (Benjamin Disraeli)
Change is an easy panacea. It takes character to stay in one place and be happy there. (Elizabeth Clarke Dunn)
Character is higher than intellect. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- The Tipping Point
Character... isn't what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be... Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context. (Malcolm Gladwell)
Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost. (Billy Graham)
-to Catharine Whyte...
I myself incline to drift, to accept a lesser situation rather than strive for a greater, and yet, I know that character in life and art is only made by an effort that is quite beyond one's ordinary everyday acceptance of things as they are. (Lawren Harris)
If you want to know what a man's character is really like... ask him to tell you the living person he most admires – for hero worship is the truest index of a man's private nature. (Sydney J. Harris)
The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do. (John Holt)
Nobody can put a character on paper without – at any rate in part and at times – sitting as a model for it himself. (Henrik Ibsen)
An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather. (Washington Irving)
What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? (Henry James)
Every man has three characters – that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has. (Alphonse Karr)
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. (Helen Keller)
I have a clear view of 12 years of history of my inner self. First the cramped self, that self with big blinkers, then the disappearance of the blinkers and the self, now gradually the reemergence of a self without blinkers. (Paul Klee)
Sometimes I can't get out of the character because the story is very intense. (Diana Krall)
The true artist consciously enters character into his work. (A. C. Leighton)
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. (Abraham Lincoln)
It is a beautiful trait in the lover's character, that they think no evil of the object loved. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out. (Thomas B. Macaulay)
The artist must reckon with his own character flaws, which do not disappear just because he has been called to be an artist. (Eric Maisel)
It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony. (W. Somerset Maugham)
Nothing can come out of the artist that is not in the man. (H. L. Mencken)
Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries. (James Michener)
Success is good for the character. (John Mortimer)
If you are going to be a big personality, you've got to have some kind of characteristic gimmick. (Farley Mowat)
A person is far more likely to appear to have sound character because he persistently follows his temperament than because he persistently follows his principles. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
My nature is orderly and observant and scrupulous and deeply introverted. (Joyce Carol Oates)
Inspiration gets us to the easel and the work refines our character. (Leif Ostlund)
Character is much easier kept than recovered. (Thomas Paine)
Paint the essential character of things. (Camille Pissarro)
Pride is the never-failing vice of fools. (Alexander Pope)
If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business. (Alexander Pope)
Go and see what others have produced, but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours and nothing that you would do would have any character. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)
If the artist only reproduces superficial features as photography does, if he copies the lineaments of a face exactly, without reference to character, he deserves no admiration. The resemblance which he ought to obtain is that of the soul. (Auguste Rodin)
Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming. (Jim Rohn)
Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike. (Theodore Roosevelt)
Character is the firm foundation stone upon which one must build to win respect. Just as no worthy building can be erected on a weak foundation, so no lasting reputation worthy of respect can be built on a weak character. (R. C. Samsel)
One thinks like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being. (May Sarton)
People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better press than people who are just funny and smart. (Howard Simons)
It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning real names. (Isaac Bashevis Singer)
It is not a question so much of a 'tree like a figure' or a 'root like a figure' – it is a question of bringing out the anonymous personality of these things. (Graham Sutherland)
Noble character is best appreciated in those ages in which it can most readily develop. (Tacitus)
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. (Henry David Thoreau)
Character is the ability to follow through on a resolution long after the emotion with which it was made has passed. (Brian Tracy)
Deal honestly and objectively with yourself; intellectual honesty and personal courage are the hallmarks of great character. (Brian Tracy)
One must keep one's character. Earn a character first if you can, and if you can't, then assume one. (Mark Twain)
A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation. (Mark Twain)
Real character emerges in the way we meet our routine, everyday obligations. (Thomas J. Watson, Jr.)
I like the trees that have had a struggle... they're like people who have had to fight to live; they've developed character. (W. P. Weston)
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