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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"Make your faces so that they do not all have the same expression, as one sees with most painters, but give them different expression, according to age, complexion, and good or bad character."
"Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character."
"We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character."
"We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches."
"The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way."
"As all curves have reference to their centres or foci, so all beauty of character has reference to the soul, and is a graceful gesture of recognition or waving of the body toward it."
"Pity the man who has a character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is silent poor indeed."
"What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?"
"Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip."
"It is true that the politician, in his professional character, does not always, or even very often, conform to the most approved pattern of private conduct."
"Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being born into a world where sanity is held to be a character flaw."
"The truths which are represented in England and Western countries generally, are those which refer to force of character, earnestness of purpose, conscientious strictness, noble charity, practical duty, whilst the truths which I find peculiarly developed in India - developed to a greater extent than anywhere else, - and in the Eastern countries generally, are those which have reference to sweetness of communion, sweetness of temper, meekness and resignation unto God."
"I feel like my responsibility as an actor is to make characters as compelling and believable as possible."
"There is no such test of a man's superiority of character as in the well-conducting of an unavoidable quarrel."
"Simplicity is the character of the spring of life, costliness becomes its autumn; but a neatness and purity, like that of the snow-drop or lily of the valley, is the peculiar fascination of beauty, to which it lends enchantment, and gives what amiability is to the mind."
"Time has a doomsday book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced."
"Character is fate. (Destiny)."
"It is far pleasanter to injure and afterwards beg forgiveness than to be injured and grant forgiveness. He who does the former gives evidence of power and afterwards of kindness of character."
"Genuine historical knowledge requires nobility of character, a profound understanding of human existence - not detachment and objectivity."
"That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence."
