Best character & virtue Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“The characters you refer to as predatory and unsavory are useful. They're the ones who make a novel into a thriller. They're active, and most of the common virtues, the signs of a good person, are not.”

Writing Persons Character Common Novel Virtue Active Good Person Thrillers Predatory

Author:Thomas Perry

“A good conscience is a continual Christmas.”

Character Happiness Liberty Virtue Honesty Integrity Ethics Conscience Good Christmas Sarcastic Founding Fathers Democracy Polymaths

Book:Poor Richard's Almanack

Source: Poor Richard's Almanack

“The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.”

Character Wisdom Virtue Honesty Ignorance Integrity Temples Doorstep Knowledge And Wisdom Knowledge And Ignorance

Author:Benjamin Franklin

“Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

Source: The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation

“Character is the sum of one's good habits (virtues) and bad habits (vices). These habits mark us and affect the ways in which we respond to life's events and challenges. Our character is our profile of habits and dispositions to act in certain ways.”

Way Character Certain Challenges Virtue Events Habit Mark Vices Disposition Profile Bad Habits Good Habits

Author:Thomas Lickona

“The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.”

Life Persons Character Success Virtue Media Ethics Philosophical

Author:Aristotle

“All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.”

People Character Virtue Vices Fairness

Book:Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics

Source: Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics

“Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.”

“What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.”

Character Action Political Certain Politics Moral Virtue Produce Citizens Politician Anxiety Performances Fellows Anxious Virtuous Disposition Statesmen Moral Character

Book:Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics

Source: Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics

“There is no man suddenly either excellently good or extremely evil, but grows either as he holds himself up in virtue or lets himself slide to viciousness.”

Men Character Evil Grows Virtue Wickedness Slides

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney (Illustrated)

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

“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

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

Source: The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi

“In the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against the assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities which we group together under the name of character.”

Character Together Names Quality Moral Virtue Groups Development Balance Battle Perfection Intellect Active Passive Assemblage Great Battle Battle Of Life

Book:Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century

Source: Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century

“One of the most important virtues of the American character is our ability to approach the complexities that life presents us with common sense and decency, .. The considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth. It is time for the president and the Congress to follow that common sense for the good of the country.”

People Important Country Character Fall President Ability Common Virtue Fine Judgment Approach Argument Congress Common Sense Complexity Distinction Decency American Character

Author:Dick Gephardt

“Character is the virtue of hard times.”

Hard Character Virtue Hard Times

Book:The Edge of the Sword

Source: The Edge of the Sword

“A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism. The distinguishing characteristic of small republics is stability: the character of large republics is mutability.”

“Purpose ... is held to be most closely connected with virtue, and to be a better token of our character than are even our acts.”

Character Purpose Virtue Connected Tokens

Book:The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle

Source: The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle

“The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable.”

Character Beautiful Virtue Worship Absolutes Infinite Finite Profitable Calculations Conditional

Book:The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle

Source: The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle

“Integrity is the core of our character.”

Character Courage Virtue Honesty Honor Integrity Core Weak Foundation

Author:L. Lionel Kendrick

“Man, having an ideal before him of that which he ought to be, and is not, and acting as though he possessed the character he ought to have, but has not, comes, by the very virtue of his aspiration, to possess the character he imagines.”

Men Character Acting Virtue Imagine Ought Ideals Aspiration Possessed

Author:William Batchelder Greene

“Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety.”

Character Turns Belief Religious Virtue Atheism Source Authority Endure Obedience Consistent Admiration Piety Religious Belief Obedience To Authority

Book:Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Source: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

“Whatever strengthens our local attachments is favorable both to individual and national character, our home, our birthplace, our native land. Think for a while what the virtues are which arise out of the feelings connected with these words, and if you have any intellectual eyes, you will then perceive the connection between topography and patriotism.”

Ifs Thinking Character Feelings Home Eye Individual Virtue Land Intellectual Connections Connected Arise Locals Perceive Native Attachment Native Land Birthplace Topography Birth Place

Book:The Doctor, &c

Source: The Doctor, &c

“Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.”

Has Beens Soul Character Beautiful Virtue Sweet Duty Honor Conscience Enthusiasm Sufficient Accomplished

Author:Madame de Stael

“False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.”

Men Real Character Light Virtue Opposites Vices Reputation Vanity Vain Deceit Modesty Masterpiece Illusory Real Character False Modesty

Author:Jean de la Bruyere

“Persons in great stations have seldom their true character drawn till several years after their death. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunities of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.”

Source: Essays Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste

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Character Quotes