234 Quotes About Character

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; do noble things, not dream them all day long; and so make life, death, and that vast forever one grand, sweet song.

Before a saint arrives at the stage of spirituality he is sure to be dwelling in a mixed condition. Not content with a quietude in his spirit, he will seek a joyous feeling.

It is to be lamented that great characters are seldom without a blot.

A fair reputation is a plant delicate in its nature, and by no means rapid in its growth. It will not shoot up in a night, like the gourd of the prophet, but like that gourd, it may perish in a night.

There is no such thing as "best" in the world of individuals.

Unspeakable sorrow usually follows upon hilarious joy, great depression after high excitement, deep withdrawal after burning fervor. Even in the matter of love, it may commence as such but due to some emotional alteration it may end up with a hatred whose intensity far exceeds the earlier love.

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

The wise man considers what he wants and the fool what he abounds in.

If lips and life do not agree, the testimony will not amount to much.

Our true character comes out in the way we pray.

Some persons are always ready to level those above them down to themselves, while they are never willing to level those below them up to their own position. But he that is under the influence of true humility will avoid both these extremes. On the one hand, he will be willing that all should rise just so far as their diligence and worth of character entitle them to; and on the other hand, he will be willing that his superiors should be known and acknowledged in their place, and have rendered to them all the honors that are their due.

Change always starts in your mind. The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel influences the way you act.

A slowness to applaud betrays a cold temper or an envious spirit.

Let your words be the genuine picture of your heart.

Remember: What you do doesn't determine who you are; who you are determines what you do.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.

A test of a Christian's character is what he does after he comes to the blockade in the road and what his attitude is after everything has left him except Jesus.

God's ultimate goal for your life on earth is not comfort, but character development. He wants you to grow up spiritually and become like Christ.

Your reputation is what people say about you. Your character is what God and your wife know about you.

Method is the very hinge of business; and there is no method without punctuality.

In these two things the greatness of man consists, to have God so dwelling in us as to impart his character to us, and to have him so dwelling in us that we recognize his presence, and know that we are his, and he is ours. The one is salvation: the other the assurance of it.

God is more concerned with conforming me to the likeness of His Son than leaving me in my comfort zones. God is more interested in inward qualities than outward circumstances - things like refining my faith, humbling my heart, cleaning up my thought life and strengthening my character.

What you are is what it takes to stop you.

No man can quench his thirst with sand, or with water from the Dead Sea; so no man can find rest from his own character, however good, or from his own acts, however religious.

Speak but little and well if you would be esteemed a man of merit.

Some are so uncharitable as to think all women bad, and others are so credulous as to believe they are all good. All will grant her corporeal frame more wonderful and more beautiful than man's. And can we think God would put a worse soul into her better body?

What is the creed of the Agnostic, but the confession of the spiritual numbness of humanity?

Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom.

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.

One must not hold one's self so divine as to be unwilling occasionally to make improvements in one's creations.

Under the right conditions it is as natural for character to become beautiful as for a flower; and if on God's earth there is not some machinery for affecting it, the supreme gift to the world has been forgotten. This is simply what man was made for. With Browning: "I say that Man was made to grow, not stop."

There is a beauty bestowed in some degree on all God's saints who pray much which is of the same nature and is the most precious of all answers to prayer. Character flows from the well-spring of prayer.

Should we take the trouble to observe ourselves we will easily perceive how changeful are our feelings. Few matters in the world are as changeable as emotion. We can be one way one minute and feel quite opposite the next. He therefore who lives by emotion lives without principle.

Before the self is touched God's children live by very changeable stimulations and sensations. That is why they exhibit a wavy up-and-down existence.

I have not so great a struggle with my vices, great and numerous as they are, as I have with my impatience. My efforts are not absolutely useless; yet I have never been able to conquer this ferocious wild beast.

One great power of sin is that it blinds men so that they do not recognize its true character.

If an ass goes traveling he will not come home a horse.

The Bible indicates that our thought lives ultimately determine our character. Solomon said, "For as he thinks within himself, so he is".

It is the unseen and the spiritual in people that determines the outward and the actual.

None love to speak so much, when the mood of speaking comes, as they who are naturally taciturn.

Man's mind occupies a large place in his life because his thought easily influences his action.

Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.

A talkative fellow may be compared to an unbraced drum, which beats a wise man out of his wits. Loquacity is ever running, and almost incurable.

Man is at the bottom an animal, midway, a citizen, and at the top, divine. But the climate of this world is such that few ripen at the top.

It matters little where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing.

You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.

The true boundary of man is moderation. When once we pass that pale, our guardian angel quits his charge of us.

Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing.

Good taste rejects excessive nicety; it treats little things as little things, and is not hurt by them.

My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty. it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

Imitation causes us to leave natural ways to enter into artificial ones; it therefore makes slaves.

One great power of sin is that it blinds men so that they do not recognize its true character.

In common discourse we denominate persons and things according to the major part of their character; he is to be called a wise man who has but few follies.

Men are like wine; not good before the lees of clownishness be settled.

If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of me.

Character grows in the stream of the world's life. That chiefly is where men are to learn love.

All the energies generated in the soul including talent, gift, knowledge and wisdom, cannot enable believers to bear spiritual fruit.

He has brought himself to this state; he has exposed his heart as a common road to every evil influence of the world, till it has become hard as a pavement.

Undertake not what you cannot perform but be careful to keep your promise.

While your character flaws may have created mild problems for other people, they will create major problems for your spouse and your marriage.

An exquisite watch went irregularly, though no defect could be discovered in it. At last it was found that the balance wheel had been near a magnet; and here was all the mischief. If the soundest mind be magnetized by any predilection, it must act irregularly.

Every tub must stand on its own bottom.

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.

Man is a moral animal, and can, and ought to arrive at great natural beauty of character. But this is simply to obey the law of his nature--the law of his flesh; and no progress along that line can project him into the spiritual sphere.

Never tell your resolution beforehand.

To have too much forethought is the part of a wretch; to have too little is the part of a fool.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

Fools are without number.

God is much more concerned about your character than your career, because you will take your character into eternity, but not your career.

All our words ought to be filled with true sweetness and grace; and this will be so if we mingle the useful with the sweet.

Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy; unselfishness; good-temper; guilelessness; sincerity--these make up the supreme gift, the stature of the perfect man.

Our power is not so much in us as through us.

Better be alone than in bad company.

Life is the cradle of eternity. As the man is to the animal in the slowness of his evolution, so is the spiritual man to the natural man. Foundations which have to bear the weight of an eternal life must be surely laid. Character is to wear forever; who will wonder or grudge that it cannot be developed in a day?

The ill-tempered person ... can make very little of his environment. However he may attempt to circumscribe it in certain directions, there will always remain a wide and ever-changing area to stimulate his irascibility. His environment, in short, is an inconstant quantity, and his most elaborate calculations and precautions must often and suddenly fail him.

Everything therefore which is capable of impairing spiritual consciousness must be denied. We must shun wild laughter, bitter crying, and every other extreme outburst of physical emotion. The body should be kept in perfect calm. Never allow anything to hinder us from understanding the small still throb of the spirit.

We make ourselves more injuries than are offered to us; they many times pass for wrongs in our own thoughts that were never meant so by the heart of him that speaketh. The apprehension of wrong hurts more than the sharpest part of the wrong done.

Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is.

Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses his remedies.

It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.

Remember that your character is the sum total of your habits.

In our manner of speech, our plans of living, our dealings with others, our conduct and walk in the church and out of it--all should be done as becomes the gospel (Phil. 1:27).

A silent man is easily reputed wise. A man who suffers none to see him in the common jostle and undress of life, easily gathers round him a mysterious veil of unknown sanctity, and men honor him for a saint. The unknown is always wonderful.

In dealing with a man of fine moral character, we are dealing with the highest achievement of the organic kingdom. But in dealing with a spiritual man we are dealing with THE LOWEST FORM OF LIFE IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. To contrast the two, therefore, and marvel that the one is apparently so little better than the other, is unscientific and unjust.

The way of every man is declarative of the end of every man.

Curiosity is the direct incontinency of the spirit.

The average person's ear weighs what you are, not what you were.

It is in their 'good' characters that novelists make, unawares, the most shocking self-revelations.

Recreation is intended to the mind as whetting is to the scythe, to sharpen the edge of it, which otherwise would grow dull and blunt. He, therefore, that spends his whole time in recreation is ever whetting, never mowing; his grass may grow and his steed starve. As, contrarily, he that always toils and never recreates, is ever mowing, never whetting; laboring much too little purpose; as good no scythe as no edge.

Whatever is received is received according to the nature of the recipient.

You can take nothing greater to the heathen world than the impress and the reflection of the love of God upon your character. That is the universal language.

As we get close to God, he is going to reveal things in our life that aren't pretty. We'll see the patterns of bitterness, anger, manipulation, and hurt that have cycled in our relationships.

Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile, some have a sad expression, some are pensive and diffident, others again are plain, honest and upright.

A real spiritual life is never dominated by, nor lived in, feeling. Rather does it regulate feeling. Nowadays Christians mistake a life of feeling for spiritual experience. This is because many have never entered into genuine spirituality and hence interpret happy sensation to be spiritual experience.

A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.

In self-examination, take no account of yourself by your thoughts and resolutions in the days of religion and solemnity, but examine how it is with you in the days of ordinary conversation and in the circumstances of secular employment.

It is good to make a jest, but not to make a trade of jesting.

I love the man that is modestly valiant, that stirs not till he most needs, and then to purpose. A continued patience I commend not.

Knowledge is not a passion from without the mind, but an active exertion of the inward strength, vigor and power of the mind, displaying itself from within.

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.

Violent excitement exhausts the mind, and leaves it withered and sterile.

There are heads sometimes so little, that there is no room for wit, sometimes so long that there is no wit for so much room.

The Church always fails at the point of self-confidence.

If you do what you always did, you'll get what you always got.

A man surprised is half beaten.

He is great enough that is his own master.

He hath a poor spirit who is not planted above petty wrongs.

Whatever littleness and vanity is to be observed in the minds of women, it is, like the cruelty of butchers, a temper that is wrought into them by that life which they are taught and accustomed to lead.

If you would test the character of anything, you only need to enquire whether that thing leads you to God or away from God.

Before He furnishes the abundant supply, we must first be made conscious of our emptiness. Before he gives strength, we must be made to feel our weakness. Slow, painfully slow, are we to learn this lesson; and slower still to own our nothingness and take the place of helplessness before the Mighty One.

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

People who are tired of K Street corruption and Wall Street greed are ready for Main Street Values.

A good name is what is given you by others and that which has been earned by you.

Satirists do expose their own ill nature.

God uses his Word, people and circumstances to mold us. All three are indispensable for character development. God's word provides the truth we need to grow, God's people provide the support we need to grow, and circumstances provide the environment we need to grow.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.

A man is not good or bad for one action.

Passion costs me too much to bestow it on every trifle.

No one knows who is listening, say nothing you would not wish put in the newspapers.

What a man is will always determine what a man does.

Make no vows to perform this or that; it shows no great strength, and makes thee ride behind thyself.

Character in a saint means the disposition of Jesus Christ persistently manifested.

Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.

Nothing of spiritual significance comes without sacrifice. Your spirituality will always be measured by the size of your sacrifice.

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

We can create as magnificent an environment as we like, but unless we change the heart it's all a waste of time.

Friends, if we be honest with ourselves, we shall be honest with each other.

The cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad.

What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what kind of a person you are.

Truth lies in character. Christ did not simply speak the truth; he was truth; truth, through and through; for truth is a thing not of words, but of life and being.

Only when mind and emotion are subject to the spirit's rule can he disregard or restrain differences in though and feeling and so be one in the spirit with all children of God.

One brave deed makes no hero.

Occasions do not make a man either strong or weak, but they show what he is.

Occasions of adversity best discover how great virtue or strength each one hath. For occasions do not make a man frail, but they show what he is.

Great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so have I heard, that all the noises and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, are hushed and appeased upon the bringing upon them the light of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge checks the dissolution of the tongue.

Let principles make decisions.

Character comes by repetition of right until right is done subconsciously.

Everyone would have something, such perhaps as we are ashamed to utter. The proud man would have honor; the covetous man, wealth and abundance; the malicious, revenge on his enemies; the epicure, pleasure and long life; the barren, children; the wanton, beauty; each would be humored in his own desire, though in opposition both to God's will, and his own good.

Gravity must be natural and simple; there must be urbanity and tenderness in it. A man must not formalize on everything. He who does so is a fool; and a grave fool is, perhaps, more injurious than a light fool.

It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.

The storms of winter often bring out the defects in a man's dwelling, and sickness often exposes the gracelessness of a man's soul. Surely anything that makes us find out the real character of our faith is good.

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.

There would be no great men if there were no little ones.

Garments that have once one rent in them are subject to be torn on every nail, and glasses that are once cracked are soon broken. Such is man's good name when once tainted with just reproach.

Take heed of jesting; many have been ruined by it. It is hard to jest, and not sometimes jeer too, which often sinks deeper than we intended or expected.

A gentle heart is tied with an easy thread.

We have employments assigned to us for every circumstance in life. When we are alone, we have our thoughts to watch; in the family, our tempers; and in company, our tongues.

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one.

Method is like packing things in a box; a good packer will get in half as much again as a bad one.

Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.

Nothing doth so fool a man as extreme passion. This doth make them fools which otherwise are not, and show them to be fools which are so.

Personal liberty is not personal license.

In our manner of speech, our plans of living, our dealings with others, our conduct and walk in the church and out of it--all should be done as becomes the gospel (Phil. 1:27).

Happiness is not the end of life; character is.

Every man's character remains as it is, or continues in the direction in which it is going, until it is compelled by IMPRESSED FORCES to change that state. Our failure has been the failure to put ourselves in the way of the impressed forces. There is clay, and there is a Potter; we have tried to get the clay to mould the clay.

The supreme test of goodness is not in the greater but in the smaller incidents of our character and practice.

Sensibility is neither good, nor evil in itself, but in its application. Under the influence of Christian principle it makes saints and martyrs; ill-directed, or uncontrolled, it is a snare, and the source of every temptation.

Because I had been a basketball player, it never dawned on me to evaluate people on the basis of color. If you could play, you could play. In America it would appear that there is more openness, acceptance, and teamwork in the gym than in the church of Jesus Christ.

A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was.

Before one can display a quiet mouth he must first possess a quiet spirit, for out of the abundance of the spirit does the mouth speak.

He who would be singular in his apparel had need have something superlative to balance that affectation.

The more one probes the workings of an emotional life the more he will be convinced of its vacillation and undependability. No one should wonder that a child of God who walks by emotion rather than by spirit usually comports himself in a wavelike fashion. He bemoans his existence because it is so unstable.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

Nothing good ever comes of violence.

Laughter should dimple the cheek, not furrow the brow. A jest should be such that all shall be able to join in the laugh which it occasions; but if it bears hard upon one of the company, like the crack of a string, it makes a stop in the music.

It is the function of perfection to make one know one's imperfection.

Our actions are the springs of our happiness or misery.

Nothing is more pathetic than having a small character in a big assignment. Many of us don't want to give attention to our character; we just want the big assignment from God.

Nothing so clearly discovers a spiritual man as his treatment of an erring brother.

It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

Nothing is more like a wise man than a fool who holds his tongue.

Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

A man's style is nearly as much a part of himself as his face, or figure, or the throbbing of his pulse; in short, as any part of his being which is subjected to the action of his will.

The heart is the mainspring.

Strength of character may be learned at work, but beauty of character is learned at home.

When respect is earned, it will first be evident on the inside.

Make but few explanations. The character that cannot defend itself is not worth vindicating.