Quotes about Character

The situations in which we find ourselves are never as important as our responses to them, which come from our "spiritual" side.

There are no formulas—no definitive how-tos—for growth in the inner character of Jesus. Such growth is a way of relentless seeking. But there are many things we can do to place ourselves at the disposal of God, and "if with all our hearts we truly seek him, we shall surely find him

Only the humble person will let God be God. Such people are realistic about who they actually are.

The best physical, chemical, and other scientific knowledge will not tell us what to do and who to be.

The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.

Our task in ourselves and in others is to transform right answers into automatic responses to real-life situations.

True Christlikeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.

Worship is at once the overall character of the renovated thought life and the only safe place for a human being to stand.

No good tree produces bad fruit, nor any bad tree good fruit…. The good person, from the good treasured up in his heart, produces what is good. LUKE 6:43—45

The spiritual side of the human being, Christian and non-Christian alike, develops into the reality that it becomes, for good or ill.

We should not try to love that person; we should train to become the kind of person who would love them. Only then can the ideal of love pass into a real possibility and practice. Our aim under love is not to be loving to this or that person, or in this or that kind of situation, but to be a person possessed by love as an overall character of life.

Love is something that has three essential characteristics: 1.) Love arises in people whose lives are already marked by certain qualities of the whole self, chief of which are faith in our all-sufficient God and joyful embracing of death to self. 2.) Love involves an orientation of the whole self toward what is good and right. 3.) Love has amazing, supernatural power for good as it indwells the individual.