quotations about character
There is a kind of character in thy life,
That to the observer doth thy history
Fully unfold.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Measure for Measure
Every character is in some respects uniform, and in others inconsistent; and it is only by the study both of the uniformity and inconsistency, and a comparison of them with each other, that the knowledge of man is acquired.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
Character, like wine or cold tea in a bottle, takes its shape from the environment.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
We become familiar with the outsides of men, as with the outsides of houses, and think we know them, while we are ignorant of so much that is passing within them.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a great building.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Character is like stock in trade; the more of it a man possesses, the greater his facilities for making additions to it.
TRYON EDWARDS
A Dictionary of Thoughts
One who stultifies his own character in desperate attempts to please everybody is called a "Gentleman."
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
The reasons which any man offers to you for his own conduct, betray his opinion of your character.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
We judge nothing so hastily as character, and yet there is nothing over which we should be more cautious.... I have always found that the so-called bad people improve on closer acquaintance, while the good fall off.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
The Reflections of Lichtenberg
Perhaps the natural character of a man may be best seen before breakfast. The world is created anew for us every morning, and he is just then reissued, as it were, from the hands of nature, with all his original peculiarities fresh upon him.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Character is what a person is in the dark.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
Concerning character, we sometimes judge of the whole by its parts.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
And so it becomes perfectly clear that in the heavenly country, where all character is like a crystal sea, everybody can see to the bottom of everybody, and everybody finds delight in the transparency, because in that country there is unlimited human communion, and no one harbors anything which he wants to have concealed.
DR. JOWETT
Continent, January 4, 1917
Character is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset. A man should give us a sense of mass.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Men love to contradict their general character. Thus a man is of a gloomy and suspicious temperament, is deemed by all morose, and ere long finds out the general opinion. He then suddenly deviates into some occasional acts of courtesy. Why? Not because he ought, not because his nature is changed; but because he dislikes being thoroughly understood. He will not be the thing whose behaviour on any occasion the most careless prophet can with certainty foretell.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Character is largely the result of the kind and quality of seed-thoughts one entertains in consciousness and transmits to the subconscious mind.
WALTER MATTHEWS
Human Life from Many Angles
It is quite impossible to understand the character of a person from one action, however striking that action may be.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
The difficulty of repairing character tempts men sometimes to neglect it; and the ease with which it is at other times established, is the true reason of its frequent default.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Judge talent at its best and character at its worst.
LORD ACTON
The Study of History
My road must be through Character to Power: I will try no other course, and I am sanguine enough to believe that this course, though not perhaps the quickest, is the surest.
LORD CANNING
attributed, Fraser's Magazine, November 1859