Quotes about Character

At the heart of Christian ethic is humility; at the heart of its parodies, pride. Different roads with different destinations, and the destinations color the character of those who travel by them.

Scripture trains us to listen to and learn from stories of all kinds, inside the sacred text and outside, and to discern patterns and meanings within them. Stories of all sorts form and shape the character of those who read them. We live within the narrative as creatures in search of an ending, in search of happiness.

Forget happiness. You were called to a throne. How will you prepare for it? That is the question of virtue, Christian style.

Virtue is what happens when habitual choices have been wise.

The future goal is the thing which produces character in the present.

Successful resistance to temptation may result in an increase of moral muscle, but that is because one is going to need it. A temptation resisted may become more, not less, fierce.

Virtue, in this strict sense, is what happens when someone has made a thousand small choices, requiring effort and concentration, to do something which is good and right but which doesn't "come naturally"—and then, on the thousand and first time, when it really matters, they find that they do what's required "automatically," as we say.

You become like what you worship.

We applaud patience but prefer it to be a virtue that others possess.

The line between good and evil runs, not between 'us' and 'them', but down the middle of each of us.

When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what's more, you reflect what you worship not only back to the object itself but also outward to the world around.

Virtue, after all, isn't just about morals in the sense of "knowing the standards to live up to" or "knowing which rules you're supposed to keep." Virtue, as we have already seen, is about the whole of life, not just the specifically "moral" choices.