Character quotes
14.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside character — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I'm playing a very strong character, it's the story of the woman Polish Jews out of the Warsaw ghetto. I've just begun my weapons training and the SAS type training that's getting me fit."
"Moral character is assessed not by what a man knows but by what he loves"
"In spite of warnings, change rarely occurs until the status quo becomes more painful than change. People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character."
"For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles. We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of sin, with souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be what we only were."
"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
"Happy will that house be in which the relations are formed from character; after the highest, and not after the lowest order; the house in which character marries, and not confusion and a miscellany of unavowable motives."
"I think the sense of community that exists with all the characters - that's the answer. The fact that they have found a family in their friends. It does give some depth and meaning to their lives."
"If you get the characters right you've done sometimes nearly half the work. I sometimes find I get the characters right then the characters will often help me write the book - not what they look like that's not very important - what people look like is not about their character. You have to describe the shape they leave in the world, how they react to things, what effect they have on people and you do that by telling their story."
"There's that lovely thing for the first month or two of writing a new book: OK, I don't know what that character's going to do, but we'll find out later. After about three or four months you come to that bit where you've got to put some plot in before it's too late, and you have to go back and start inserting plot, and, ooh, I've left out the literature, OK, lets put some in."
"The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force."
"The character of a people may be ruined by charity."
"The chief factor in any man's success or failure must be his own character."
"I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!"
"Every man has at times in his mind the Ideal of what he should be, but is not. This ideal may be high and complete, or it may be quite low and insufficient; yet in all men, that really seek to improve, it is better than the actual character... Man never falls so low, that he can see nothing higher than himself."
"It is not with a rush and a spring that we are to reach Christ's character, and attain to perfect saintship; but step by step, foot by foot, hand over hand, we are slowly and often painfully to mount the ladder that rests on earth, and rises to heaven."
"A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free."
"There is no road to success but through a clear strong purpose. Nothing can take its place. A purpose underlies character, culture, position, attainment of every part."
"There are essential and inessential insanities. The later are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon."
"The alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls. They will trust the written characters and not remember themselves."
"I'm in four different films this year, and I have four different accents. I sound different in every film. You have to love a character to play it well, and change in my work is what I want."
