Character

Moral character or character is an evaluation of a person's moral and mental qualities. Such an evaluation is subjective — one person may evaluate someone's character on the basis of their virtue, another may consider their fortitude, courage, loyalty, honesty, or piety.

Sourced

• Character is the inhabited habit.
  • Leonid S. Sukhorukov, All About Everything (2005).

• Just because you are a character doesn't mean you have character.
  • Winston Wolfe, Pulp Fiction (1994).

• Our characters are the result of our conduct.
  • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 335 B.C.).

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you, and were helped by you, will remember you when forget-me-nots are withered. Carve your name on hearts, 'and not on marble.
  • Charles Spurgeon, p. 44.

• A man is what he is, not what men say he is. His character no man can touch. His character is what he is before his God and his Judge; and only himself can damage that. His reputation is what men say he is. That can be damaged; but reputation is for time, character is for eternity.
  • John B. Gough, p. 46.

• A man's character is like a fence — it cannot be strengthened by whitewash.
  • Author unknown, p. 46.

• Character is made up of small duties faithfully performed — of self-denials, of self-sacrifices, of kindly acts of love and duty.
  • Author unknown, p. 45.

• Character is the product of daily, hourly actions, and words, and thoughts; daily forgivenesses, unselfishness, kindnesses, sympathies, charities, sacrifices for the good of others, struggles against temptation, submissiveness under trial. Oh, it is these, like the blending colors in a picture, or the blending notes of music, which constitute the man.
  • J. R. Macduff, p. 46.

• I have learned by experience that no man's character can be eventually injured but by his own acts.
  • Rowland Hill, p. 45.

• Man can have strength of character only as he is capable of controlling his faculties; of choosing a rational end; and, in its pursuit, of holding fast to his integrity against al! the might of external nature.
  • Mark Hopkins, p. 45.

• Men and brethren, a simple trust in God is the most essential ingredient in moral sublimity of character.
  • Richard Fuller, p. 45.

• Modern engineers, after having erected a viaduct, insist upon subjecting it to a severe strain by a formal trial trip, before allowing it to be opened for public traffic; and it would almost seem that God, in employing moral agents for the carrying out of His purposes, secures that they shall be tested by some dreadful ordeal, before He fully commits to them the work which He wishes them to perform.
  • William Mackergo Taylor, p. 44.

• Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take away with us.
  • Wilhelm von Humboldt, p. 44.

• Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choice

of good or evil we have made through life.

• • J. C. Geikie, p. 46.

• The materials of the first temple were made ready in solitude. Those of the last also must be shaped in retirement; in the silence of the heart; in the quietness of home; in the practice of unostentatious duty.
  • Henry Giles, p. 45.

• There never has been a great and beautiful character, which has not become so by filling well the ordinary and smaller offices appointed of God.
  • Horace Bushnell, p. 45.

• Whatever capacities there may be for enjoyment or for suffering in this strange being of ours, and God only knows what they are, they will be drawn out wholly in accordance with character.
  • Mark Hopkins, p. 45.

• When the captain throws out his sheet-anchor, and the ship "rides at anchor," as it is called, there is a great strain on every link of that chain; and if one bad link breaks, off goes the anchor, and the ship is driven before the winds, and may be destroyed. Now, our character is very much like the chain; one bad piece vitiates and spoils it. So we must have a pure character.
  • John Hall, p. 44.

Unsourced

• If you lose money, you lose nothing, If you lose time, you lose some thing, If you lose character you lose every thing.
  • Swami Vivekananda

• Who hasn’t despised a grand realization only because it didn’t stamp your own name there on the first line? Who of us didn’t feel disdain about the good and the beauty only because they seemed to be far, apparently far from our reach? How many of us haven’t given up the production only because the harvest wouldn’t be ours, and how many of us haven’t chosen the low quality of acts and words only because it would be the other ones who were going to be served and who were going to listen to us? Who hasn’t stolen, who hasn’t misused, or hurt, or cursed, who hasn’t gotten even in someone else the frustration that’s overdue only by you? Who hasn’t tasted the strength and weakness of someone else and in both cases felt yourself humiliated or presumptuous without paying attention of the own value? Who hasn’t hurt or offended someone when being offended or hurt? But who has eased someone else’s pain when the own heart is fulfilled with the personal joy? Who has chosen to stay beside the foreign pain when the own heart is full of fleeting and individualistic happiness? How many of us haven’t chosen the weight in the conscience instead of the freedom that lives in the loyalty and in the truth?
  • Patricky Field

• Wherever a man goes to dwell his character goes with him. Every man's character is good in his own eyes.
  • Anonymous

• 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.
  • Helen Adams Keller

• Character is destiny.
  • Heraclitus

• A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's.
  • Jean Paul Richter

• Even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.
  • Earl of Chesterfield

• There's no question that character counts. Character counts today, it counted a century ago and it will count a century from now. It's absolutely critical because you're reflecting some basic beliefs of honor, integrity, and those different elements of life that will aid you in progressing and frankly, [you'll get] in trouble if you don't believe in 'em.
  • Milton Ward

• Character is the ability to carry out a worthy decision after the emotion of making that decision has passed.
  • Hyrum W. Smith

• I believe people who are in a position of visibility and leadership affect the character of young people and individuals who look to them as leaders. And in some respects, just as important as their policies and positions is their character and their substance. What for me makes people like Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and John Adams and George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan such extraordinary leaders is that they had integrity through and through. What they were on the inside and what they said on the outside was harmonious. There a lot of people like that. I think that if people try to live a very different personal life not consistent with the role they’ve assumed as a governor or senator or president, we lose something as a nation.
  • Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, in the September 2005 The Atlantic

• Character does count. For too long we have gotten by in a society that says the only thing right is to get by and the only thing wrong is to get caught. Character is doing what's right when nobody is looking...
  • Oklahoma Congressman J. C. Watts, speech at the Republican National Convention (August 13, 1996)

• Form yourself; nobody else would bother.
  • Swami Raj

• " Knowledge will give you power, but character, respect."
  • Bruce Lee

• No man knows of what stuff he is made until prosperity and ease try him.
  • A. P. Gouthey

• " Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wing; only character endures."
  • Horace Greeley