Best character & self Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“...But I don't think I'm the only person who is tired of books and movies full of paper-doll characters you don't care about, who have no self-respect and no respect for anybody or any institution....And I don't want to sound preachy or Victorian, but I'm tired of amorality in fiction and in real life. Immorality is a fascinating human dilemma that creates suspense for the readers and tension for the characters, but where is the tension in an amoral situation? When people have no personal code, nothing is threatening and nothing is meaningful.”

“Angels can help us understand what intuition means in a personal way. Angels are actually in charge of a large part of our intuitive self. Viewing intuition from the perspective of angel consciousness, we can say that intuition is our way of tapping into a higher power for guidance and awareness.”

Way Mean Self Character Helping Spirituality Consciousness Awareness Perspective Higher Angel Intuition Guidance Intuitive Higher Power Tapping

Author:Terry Taylor

“New pressures are causing ever more people to find their main satisfaction in their consumptive role rather than in their productive role. And these pressures are bringing forward such traits as pleasure-mindedness, self-indulgence, materialism, and passivity as conspicuous elements of the American character.”

People Self Character Pleasure Roles Elements Pressure Satisfaction Productive Materialism Traits Consumerism Indulgence Overconsumption Passivity Self Indulgence American Character

Author:Vance Packard

“Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.”

Self Character Moving Development Consuming Immature Crisps Self Sufficiency Sufficiency Searching For Happiness Personality Flaws Mature And Immature

Author:Quentin Crisp

“I have a clear view of 12 years of history of my inner self. First the cramped self, that self with big blinkers, then the disappearance of the blinkers and the self, now gradually the reemergence of a self without blinkers.”

Years Firsts Self Character Bigs Views Clear Inner Self Disappearance Clear View Blinkers

Author:Paul Klee

“By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy-indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction.”

Source: Osler's

“The great purpose is to set aside a reasonable part of the vanishing wilderness, to make certain that generations of Americans yet unborn will know what it is to experience life on undeveloped, unoccupied land in the same form and character as the Creator fashioned it... It is a great spiritual experience. I never knew a man who took a bedroll into an Idaho mountainside and slept there under a star-studded summer sky who felt self-important that next morning. Unless we preserve some opportunity for future generations to have the same experience, we shall have dishonored our trust.”

“When I first met Adèle I was like, ‘Wow, this girl has a strong character!’ She has something very free about her. I’m not used to it. Some actresses are too self-aware, they strike a pose. Adèle is a force of nature.”

Firsts Self Character Used Girl Strong Force Mets Actresses Strikes Ads Wow Forces Of Nature This Girl Strong Character

Author:Lea Seydoux

“The only real reason for self-referencing is the fun factor. It's fun for the writer, getting little peeks at what old characters might be up to. And it's fun for readers to spot a familiar face, or pick up on a made-up book title or something from an earlier story. I don't know that it does -- or even should -- contribute to the story in hand being any better than it would have been without it.”

Knows Should Littles Doe Has Beens Made Book Real Self Reason Character Stories Hands Might Faces Fun Reader Picks Familiar Factors Spots Titles Referencing Familiar Faces Book Titles

Author:Charles de Lint

“More than all, and above all, [George] Washington was master of himself. If there be one quality more than another in his character which may exercise a useful control over the men of the present hour, it is the total disregard of self when in the most elevated positions for influence and example.”

Ifs Men May Self Character Hours Quality Influence Example Position He Man Masters Exercise Disregard

Author:Charles Francis Adams, Sr.

“The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced - that without intelligence we should be brutes - but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.”

“There is nothing that so raises a young man's self-esteem, that so contributes to the formation of his character as for him to find himself unexpectedly confronted with a task which he has to accomplish entirely on his own initiative and by his own efforts.”

Men Self Character Young Effort Self Esteem Tasks Raises Accomplish Esteem Young Man Initiative Formation

Author:Stefan Zweig

“Individualism is the self-affirmation of the individual self as individual self without regard to its participation in its world. As such it is the opposite of collectivism, the self affirmation of the self as part of a larger whole without regard to its character as an individual self.”

World Self Whole Character Individual Opposites Regard Individualism Affirmation Participation Collectivism Self Affirmation

Book:Writings on religion

Source: Writings on religion

“One thing I hate about the New Deal is that it is killing what, to me, is the American pioneering spirit. I simply do not know what to tell my own boys, leaving school and confronting this new world whose ideal is Security and whose practice is dependence upon government instead of upon one's self. All the old character-values seem simply insane from a practical point of view; the self-reliant, the independent, the courageous man is penalized from every direction.”

“It is indeed very possible, that the Persons we laugh at may in the main of their Characters be much wiser Men than our selves; but if they would have us laugh at them, they must fall short of us in those Respects which stir up this Passion.”

Ifs Men May Persons Self Character Fall Passion Laughing Wiser

Book:Works

Source: Works

“Humanity had to inflict terrible injuries on itself before the self, the identical, purpose-directed, masculine character of human beings was created, and something of this process is repeated in every childhood.”

Humans Self Character Purpose Humanity Process Human Beings Childhood Terrible Injury Masculine Identical

Book:Dialectic of Enlightenment

Source: Dialectic of Enlightenment

“Character is not the enemy of self-expression and personal freedom, it is their necessary precondition.”

Self Character Enemy Expression Self Expression Personal Freedom

Book:On Character: Essays

Source: On Character: Essays

“But what must be the character of that policy, which aims at national prosperity through the impoverishment of a large proportion of the home producers, with a view to supply foreigners at a cheaper rate, and give them all the benifet of the national privation and self denial?”

Giving Self Character Home Views Policy Aim Rate Prosperity Producers Denial Proportion Foreigners Cheaper Self-denial

Book:A Treatise on Political Economy: Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth

Source: A Treatise on Political Economy: Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth

“We go to the mountain for enlightenment, for self-realization, for adventure, for discovery. It's pregnant with meaning. When people see a mountain, they invest it with meaning. Not plot. Not character.”

People Self Character Adventure Mountain Enlightenment Discovery Self Realization Realization Plot Pregnant

Author:Joe Rohde

“A thorough: miser must possess considerable strength of character to bear the self-denial imposed by his penuriousness. Equal sacrifices, endured voluntarily in a better cause, would make a saint or a martyr.”

Self Character Causes Sacrifice Bears Equal Saint Denial Martyr Thorough Strength Of Character Misers Self-denial

Book:Aphorisms and Reflections: A Miscellany of Thought and Opinion

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: A Miscellany of Thought and Opinion

“Charity should be self-sustainable. That is, it should create more wealth rather than perpetuating the cycle of poverty and dependence. In this sense, the best form of charity would be providing quality education for children and more importantly, building a good character in them.”

“Self-Control is the very essence of character. To be able to look a man straight in the eye, calmly and deliberately, without the slightest ruffle of temper under extreme provocation, gives a sense of power which nothing else can give. To feel that you are always, not sometimes, master of yourself, gives a dignity and strength to character, buttresses it, supports it on every side, as nothing else can. This is the culmination of thought mastery.”

Source: Peace, Power & Plenty (Unabridged): Before a Man Can Lift Himself, He Must Lift His Thought

“Businessmen are notable for a peculiarly stalwart character, which enables them to enjoy without loss of self-reliance the benefits of tariffs, franchises, and even outright government subsidies.”

Self Character Government Enjoy Loss Business Benefits Businessman Self Reliance Reliance Notable Subsidies Tariffs Stalwart

Book:the Uses of the Past

Source: the Uses of the Past

“If you become very self-conscious about what you are doing, you kill. You kill the character. Then it doesn't work. You have to come from a sincere place. And you don't think too much. I don't go to the hotel and I start thinking what am I going to say tomorrow and start writing things down.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Self Character Too Much Tomorrow Conscious Hotel Sincere Self Conscious Doing You Writing Things Down

Author:Antonio Banderas

“Character is the spiritual body of the person, and represents the individualization of vital experience, the conversion of unconscious things into self-conscious men.”

Men Persons Self Character Body Spiritual Conscious Conversion Unconscious Self Conscious Individualization

Book:Character and characteristic men

Source: Character and characteristic men

“The great characteristic of men of active genius is a sublime self-confidence, springing not from self-conceit, but from an intense identification of the man with his object, which lifts him altogether above the fear of danger and death, which gives to his enterprise a character of insanity to the common eye, and which communicates an almost superhuman audacity to his will.”

Source: Literature and life, lects

“Grace in women has more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character, which reposes on its own sensations and derives pleasure from all around it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, "in their eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their face," which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a secret sympathy towards them.”

Source: Sketches and Essays: And Winterslow (essays Written There).

“Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within.”

Men Firsts Self Character Self Love Prepared Every Man Welcome Flattery Blinded Verdict Flatterer True Character

Author:Plutarch

“Character, self-discipline, determination, attitude and service are the substance of life.”

Self Character Attitude Discipline Determination Substance Self Discipline

Book:The Measure of our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours

Source: The Measure of our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours

“A letter is not a dialogue or even an omniscient exposition. It is a fabric of surfaces, a mask, a form as well suited to affectations as to the affections. The letter is, by its natural shape, self-justifying; it is one's own evidence, deposition, a self-serving testimony. In a letter the writer holds all the cards, controls everything about himself and about those assertions he wishes to make concerning events or the worth of others. For completely self-centered characters, the letter form is a complex and rewarding activity.”

Source: Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature

Character Quotes

Related topics

Character Quotes