Quotes about Character

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

Our deeds determine us, as long as we determine our deeds

He has got no good red blood in his body, said Sir James. No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass, and it was all semicolons and parenthesis, said Mrs. Cadwallader.

It is a mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world some day and then every rational satisfaction your nature that you deny now will assault like a savage appetite.

character is not cut in marble—it is not something solid and unalterable.

character is not cut in marble—it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.

We prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil which gradually determines character.

A character at unity with itself —that performs what it intends, subdues every counteracting impulse, and has no visions beyond the distinctly possible —is strong by its very negations.

But in that curious compound, the feminine character, it may easily happen that the flavor is unpleasant in spite of excellent ingredients;

Maggie actually forgot that she had any special cause of sadness this morning, as she stood on a chair to look at a remarkable series of pictures representing the Prodigal Son in the costume of Sir Charles Grandison, except that, as might have been expected from his defective moral character, he had not, like that accomplished hero, the taste and strength of mind to dispense with a wig.

The master was odd. I was kind and just to my dependants, but I excited in them a shrinking, half-contemptuous pity; for this class of men and women are but slightly determined in their estimate of others by general considerations, or even experience, of character. They judge of persons as they judge of coins, and value those who pass current at a high rate.