A Man's Character Quotes & Sayings

As we celebrate President Reagan's remarkable career and historic legacy, we also celebrate a man of strong character, deep conviction, unforgettable charm, and wonderful wit. — Jim Ramstad

To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse. — Anatole Broyard

Good crews are good blends of personalities: someone to lead the charge, someone to hold something in reserve; someone to pick a fight, someone to make peace; someone to think things through, someone to charge ahead without thinking. Somehow all this must mesh. That's the steepest challenge. Even after the right mixture is found, each man or woman in the boat must recognize his or her place in the fabric of the crew, accept it, and accept the others as they are. It is an exquisite thing when it all comes together in just the right way. The intense bonding and the sense of exhilaration that results from it are what many oarsmen row for, far more than for trophies or accolades. But it takes young men or women of extraordinary character as well as extraordinary physical ability to pull it off. — Daniel James Brown

When a man puts on a Character he is a stranger to, there's as much difference between what he appears, and what he is really in himself, as there is between a VIzor and a Face. — Jean De La Bruyere

Letty's first false step was here: she said to herself _I can not_, and did not. She lacked courage--a want in her case not much to be wondered at, but much to be deplored, for courage of the true sort is just as needful to the character of a woman as of a man. — George MacDonald

It was easy to be good and kind in times of plenty. The trying times were the moments that defined a man.
And love? Love was something that did much to change a person. It brought joy as it brought suffering, and in turn brought about those moments that defined one's character. Love gave life to the lifeless. It was the greatest of all living powers.
But, as with all things, love had a dark side to it. — Renee Ahdieh

The more uniform a man's voice, step, manner of conversation, handwriting
the more quiet, uniform, settled, his actions, his character. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth, but where is there any mirth in our time, and do people know how to be mirthful? ... A man's mirth is a feature that gives away the whole man, from head to foot. Someone's character won't be cracked for a long time then the man bursts out laughing somehow quite sincerely, and his whole character suddenly opens up as if on the flat of your hand. Only a man of the loftiest and happiest development knows how to be mirthful infectiously, that is, irresistibly and goodheartedly. I'm not speaking of his mental development, but of his character, of the whole man. And so, if you want to discern a man and know his soul, you must look, not at how he keeps silent, or how he speaks, or how we weeps, or even how he is stirred by the noblest ideas, but you had better look at him when he laughs. If a man has a good laugh, it means he's a good man. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It takes a while for audiences on film to see you as something different if they've seen you for so long as a specific character. It's up to the actor to be like, 'Look man, let's try something else,' even if it's an ultra-low-budget independent. People who rep you will keep going with whatever they can send you on. — Omar Dorsey

I think that Spider-Man is a part of our culture. He's a perennial character. He's something that's constantly reexamined and there are so many versions of him in the comics that it was something that I thought that we could do cinematically. He belongs on the big screen. — Marc Webb

All jokes aside, it's a very difficult job playing the straight man. Jason is potentially the most brilliant straight man that ever was because he's also really funny while doing it, which is even harder. I've always seen myself playing characters who are flawed. We use comedy in our lives to obscure the drama. — Will Arnett

Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth. — Eleanor Roosevelt

'Iron Man' was this fun, poppy thing bound to make a zillion dollars. And we were the other side of a superhero movie. More complex with The Hulk being this complex character - that's what it was. — Louis Leterrier

As is often the case with lawless natures, Ricardo's faith in any given individual was of a simple, unquestioning character. For man must have some support in life. — Joseph Conrad

What the fates have writ, men shall not erase . . . . How many times he [Lut] had uttered those words. But what exactly did they mean? That one's fate was inalterably fixed? A man's entire life? Was there no chance for redemption? Though he had never revealed this to anyone, especially not the elders, he'd long entertained the notion that perhaps not all of a man's life was preordained. For, if so, what was the point of living? Perhaps, just perhaps, he dared to imagine, impediments were placed in our paths by the gods, and a man was judged by how well he dealt with those obstacles . . . . Instead of a man being wholly defined by his fate, perhaps a man's very character was defined by his response to the fate that was spun for him. Couldn't it at least be possible? — James Jennewein

The object of man's worship, whatever it be, will naturally be his standard of perfection. He clothes it with every attribute, belonging, in his view, to a perfect character; and this character he himself endeavors to attain. — Simon Greenleaf

Freedom is what we all seek, but it's what we do with that freedom that ultimately defines our character. In the end, a man's character cements his fate, good or bad. — Sonny Barger

If a man has to ask for your trust, it's a sure sign that you should not give it. Trust should be earned inherently, without any verbal demands. Trust is knowing a man's character, knowing truth, and relying on that character and truth even when the odds seem against you. — Anne Elisabeth Stengl

Choice betrays character," I said.
"That's not true." Loring moved his finger along the
sheet as if writing his name in cursive. "Eliza, you can't judge a man solely on his actions. Sometimes actions are nothing more than reactions. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

A man's character is his fate. — Brien Jones

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice should create in the discerning male reader a deeply rooted concupiscence for Elizabeth Bennet that springs not from her vivacity or from her wit but from her unerring instinct to follow the deeply moral directives of her own character even against the influences and arguments of society, of convention, of seeming necessity, and of her friends and family. Properly read, Austen should be a form of pornography for the morally and spiritually discriminating man. — Gerald Weaver

Texts between Dr. Stayner & Livie(with a little help from Kacey)
Dr. Stayner: Tell me you did one out-of-character thing last night
Livie: I drank enough Jell-O shots to fill a small pool, and then proceeded to break out every terrible dance move known to mankind. I am now the proud owner of a tattoo and if I didn't have a video to prove otherwise, I'd believe I had it done in a back alley with hepatitis-laced needles. Satisfied?
Dr. Stayner: That's a good start. Did you talk to a guy?
Kacey(answering for Livie): Not only did I talk to a guy but I've now seen two penises, including the one attached to the naked man in my room this morning when I woke up. I have pictures. Would you like to see one?
Dr. Stayner: Glad you're making friends. Talk to you on Saturday — K.A. Tucker

Griffin took one step toward the big desk and swiped his arms across the entire top. Pens, papers, books, a small marbel bust, and an ink well all crashed to the floor.
Griffin leaned across the desk, his arms braced on the now-clear top, and stared into Wakefield's outraged eyes. "We seem to be under a confusion of communication. I did not come here to ask for your sisters hand. I came to tell you I will marry Hero, with or without your permission Your Grace. She has lain with me more than once. She may very well be carrying my child. And if you think I'll give up her or our babe, you have not done nearly enough research into my character or history."
Griffin pushed himself off the desk before the other man could utter a word and storde out the door. — Elizabeth Hoyt

What a man's mind can create, man's character can control. — Thomas A. Edison

An honorable man or woman is one who is truthful; free from deceit; above cheating, lying, stealing, or any form of deception. An honorable man or woman is one who learns early that one cannot do wrong and feel right. A man's character is judged on how he keeps his word and his agreements. — Ezra Taft Benson

It is usually in better taste to praise an isolated action or a production of genius, than a man's character as a whole. — Elizabeth Wordsworth

A man's worth can be judged through those who dislike him. — Bill Loguidice

A man's character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow. — Henry Ward Beecher

The entire merit of a man can never be made known; nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names; as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions. — Herman Melville

I think [Robert E.] Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man, had a good character, and acted conscientiously. It's always the good men who do the most harm. — Henry Adams

From the beginning, Judeo-Christian principles have been the foundation for American public dialogue and government policy. They serve as the solid basis for political activism in support of a better socioeconomic environment. Found in American homes, truth from the Hebrew Christian Bible has enabled individual liberty to prevail over secular empires because it is a practical message about reality from man's Creator.
In their quest for liberty, Americans focused upon the conspicuously self-evident "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." It is the governing character of these principles (laws), such as humility, the Golden Rule, and the Ten Commandments, that leads to success. This is the sure foundation upon which man's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" rests. Called "virtue" by America's Founding Fathers, the impartial and divine element frees man to do what is right. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Cor. 3:17). — David A. Norris

I should understand the land, not as a commodity, an inert fact to be taken for granted, but as an ultimate value, enduring and alive, useful and beautiful and mysterious and formidable and comforting, beneficent and terribly demanding, worthy of the best of man's attention and care ... [My father] insisted that I learn to do the hand labor that the land required, knowing
and saying again and again
that the ability to do such work is the source of a confidence and an independence of character that can come no other way, not by money, not by education. — Wendell Berry

I think there's this new kind of character; it's a sidekick-slash-leading man role. People like Zach Galifianakis and Seth Rogen have been really successful in those roles. You don't have to be this square-jawed, chiseled, deep-voiced Superman; you can be funny and normal and put in the leading man category. — Tyler Labine

Nor is it in fact a purely human knowledge bound by the context and categories of the human mind. Rather, metaphysics, which some of his translators render as metaphysic in order to emphasize its non-multiple but unitary nature, is the science of Ultimate Reality, attainable through the intellect and not reason, of an essentially suprahuman character and including in its fullness the whole of man's being. It is a sacred science or scientia sacra, a wisdom which liberates and which requires not only certain mental capacities but also moral and spiritual qualifications. It — Frithjof Schuon

If it were possible for us to have so deep an insight into a man's character as shown both in inner and in outer actions, that every, even the least, incentive to these actions and all external occasions which affect them were so known to us that his future conduct could be predicted with as great a certainty as the occurrence of a solar or lunar eclipse, we could nevertheless still assert that the man is free. — Immanuel Kant

He can blow the flute very well-that 'a can,' said a young married man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as 'Susan Tall's husband. — Thomas Hardy

One summer when Carol was attending day camp, Greta had an affair with a man named Mel Carter. He was an Eastern publicity representative for a film studio, and often instructed dinner parties to which we went in those days with accounts of the movies' coming of age. 'We have a picture coming up,' he said once, 'in which a character says "son of a bitch." Lots of exciting things are happening. Still, it's only a beginning. Much remains to be done. — Peter De Vries

What is evil neither can nor should be loved; for it is not one's duty to be a lover of evil or to become like what is bad; and we have said that like is dear to like. Must the friendship, then, be forthwith broken off? Or is this not so in all cases, but only when one's friends are incurable in their wickedness? If they are capable of being reformed one should rather come to the assistance of their character or their property, inasmuch as this is better and more characteristic of friendship. But a man who breaks off such a friendship would seem to be doing nothing strange; for it was not to a man of this sort that he was a friend; when his friend changed, therefore, and he is unable to save him, he gives him up. — Aristotle.

There's only a handful of directors who really understand what I call the alchemical balance between a man and a woman, in a woman's body, which most people consider the strong woman character. — Michelle Rodriguez

She imagined the trade in meanings as a kind of game, in which tokens shaped like mahjong tiles were exchanged and switched. Signs moved from one world to another, clacked together, made new sequences. A man in Bolshevik Russia became virtually Chinese; a world unfolded from a paper envelope. This game existed in the borderless continent of her father's head. She could see how he concentrated: 'cher' in Russian, 'neve' in Italian, 'snow' in English, until he arrived at the sound 'xue', and then the character: the radical symbol for rain, the strokes for frozen, the little block of marks that revealed the transition from alphabets to ideograms. — Gail Jones

There are complete men and incomplete men. If you would be a complete man, put all of your soul's strength into all of your life's actions. — Eugenio Maria De Hostos

Are there any two words in all of the English language more closely twinned than courage and cowardice? I do not think there is a man alive who will not yearn to possess the former and dread to be accused of the latter. One is held to be the apogee of man's character, the other its nadir. An yet, to me the two sit side by side on the circle of life, removed from each other by the merest degree of arc. (MARCH - Chapter 11 - page 168) — Geraldine Brooks

Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man's character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person's virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one's own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. — Ayn Rand

For many men value appearances more than reality - thus they violate what's right. Everyone's prepared to sigh over some suffering man, though no sorrow really eats their hearts, or they can pretend to join another person's happiness forcing their faces into smiling masks. But a good man discerns true character - he's not fooled by eyes feigning loyalty, favouring him with watered-down respect. — Aeschylus

What has first drawn him to Max was the man's unyielding character, not whether he was real-life boyfriend material. — K.A. Merikan

Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man's character. — Thomas A. Edison

I liked 'Scream of the Banshee' because it was a real challenge. I thought, 'How am I going to pull off this character?' But, I also thought, 'Oh, man, I'm going to go for it.' He's got all the defects of character that an actor loves to play. So, I had a really great time. — Lance Henriksen

This is ridiculous," she said, then changed her mind. The last time she had confessed her real feelings to this man, it hadn't gone well. "Our lines, I mean, in this play. But I hope you will choose to enjoy it a little."
"Of course. It would be uncivil to say I will not enjoy making love to you tonight."
Jane's mouth was dry. "Wh-what?"
"Tonight as we perform the play," he said, completely composed. "My character professes love to your character, and to say that such a task is odious would be an insult to you."
"Ah," she said with a little laugh. "All right then." She had forgotten for a moment that "making love" did not mean to Austen what it meant today. Of course, Mr. Nobley the twenty-first-century actor knew that, and she squinted at him to see if he had been playing with her. — Shannon Hale

I directed and produced Conviction, a movie about a man who spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. I got to know Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck very well - he's a character in the movie - and I got very passionate about the cause. It's just so inherently dramatic. — Tony Goldwyn

A man's penmanship is an unfailing index of his character, moral and mental, and a criterion by which to judge his peculiarities of taste and sentiments. — Bill Vaughan

Truth recognizes truth, just as a man with real talent is the first to recognize another with real talent. Likewise, superficiality attracts others with an artificial surface. Only the superficial applaud the superficial. A man of true substance rejects the superficial because he seeks only truth and depth. Based on this reasoning, you can easily measure the weight of any man's character just by observing who he admires. — Suzy Kassem

Much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul. — Herman Melville

As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above", I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. — Charles Dickens

To judge a man's character by only one of its manifestations is like judging the sea by a jugful of its water. — Paul Eldridge

It can be a simple sentence that makes one single point and you build for that. You zero in on one moment that gets that character, you go for it, that's it, man, and if you fail the whole thing is down the drain, but if you make it you hit the moon. — Jack Lemmon

When a judge walks into the room, and everybody stands up, you're not standing up to that guy, you're standing up to the robe that he's wearing and the role that he's going to play. What makes him worthy of that role is his integrity, as a representative of the principles of that role, and not some group of prejudices of his own. So what you're standing up to is a mythological character. I imagine some kings and queens are the most stupid, absurd, banal people you could run into, probably interested only in horses and women, you know. But you're not responding to them as personalities, you're responding to them in their mythological roles. When someone becomes a judge, or President of the United States, the man is no longer that man, he's the representative of an eternal office; he has to sacrifice his personal desires and even life possibilities to the role that he now signifies. — Joseph Campbell

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. — Stefan Zweig

A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him. — Frederick Douglass

Consciousness does not know its own character
unless in determining itself reflectively from the standpoint of another's point of view. It exists its character in pure distinction non-thematically and non-thetically in the proof which it effects of its own contingency and in the nihilation by which it recognizes and surpasses its facticity. This is why pure introspective self-description does not give us character. Proust's hero 'does not have' a directly apprehensible character; he is presented first as being conscious of himself as an ensemble of general reactions common to all men ... in which each man can recognise himself. This is because these reactions belong to the general 'nature' of the psychic. — Jean-Paul Sartre

A man's magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside of him. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power. I was not a murderer. I was not like Victor Sells. I was Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. I was a wizard. Wizards control their power. They don't let it control them. And wizards don't use magic to kill people. They use it to discover, to protect, to mend, to help. Not to destroy. — Jim Butcher

An increased power of reflection like an increased knowledge only adds to man's affliction, and above all it is certain that for the individual as for the generation no task is more difficult than to escape from the temptations of reflection, simply because they are so dialectical and the result of one clever discovery may give the whole question a new turn, because at any moment reflection is capable of explaining everything quite differently and allowing one some way of escape; because at the last moment of a reflective decision reflection is capable of changing everything
after one has made far greater exertions than are necessary to get a man of character into the midst of things. — Soren Kierkegaard

Atticus Finch's secret of living was so simple it was deeply complex: where most men had codes and tried to live up to them, Atticus lived his to the letter with no fuss, no fanfare, and no soul-searching. His private character was his public character. His code was simple New Testament ethic, its rewards were the respect and devotion of all who knew him. Even his enemies loved him, because Atticus never acknowledged that they were his enemies. He was never a rich man, but he was the richest man his children ever knew. His — Harper Lee

I can tell by my own reaction to it that this book is harmful. But let him only wait and perhaps one day he will admit to himself that this same book has done him a great service by bringing out the hidden sickness of his heart and making it visible. - Altered opinions do not alter a man's character (or do so very little); but they do illuminate individual aspects of the constellation of his personality which with a different constellation of opinions had hitherto remained dark and unrecognizable. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It's the way a man chooses to limit himself that determines his character. A man without habits, consistency, redundancy - and hence boredom - is not human. He's insane. — Luke Rhinehart

Sometimes the messages I put out are somewhat of that [street] nature, but the thing is, that's not the person, it's just like an actor or something, It's just like when Wesley Snipes is not [the character he played in] 'New Jack City,' but a lot of people get it twisted. They think, 'That's that guy. That's that dude. That's how he roll.' But man, that's definitely not how I roll. I believe in God. I'm a Christian ... People always trying to stereotype people because of their job. — Project Pat

I read that they have buried his body like a dog's - without funeral rites, without tribal wail, with no solemn song or act. That is the deed of to-day. That is the best that this generation has to give to this noble historic character, this man who in his person ends the line of aboriginal sanctities older that the religion of Christian or Jew. Very well. So let it stand for the present. But there is a generation coming that shall reverse this judgement of ours. Our children shall build monuments to those whom we stoned, and the great aboriginals whom we killed will be counted by the future American as among the historic characters of the continent. — Bill Yenne

The true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching. — John Wooden

It's easy to enjoy your job and enjoy other people when things are going good. When you're faced with adversity is when the character of men is measured. There's a Mennonite proverb, 'Man, like a tree, is measured best when cut down.' — Dan Quisenberry

I think you have to find the humanity in the character and then the deterioration is a part of the process - the journey of the character. It's like playing King Lear. You can start off as a nice old man who finishes up crazy. — David Wenham

To those who would call me a thug or worse because I show passion on a football field - don't judge a person's character by what they do between the lines. Judge a man by what he does off the field, what he does for his community, what he does for his family. — Richard Sherman

I'm a character actor. Nobody's ever seemed to think of me as a leading man. I'm 6'6'. I've got a big nose. I'm gangly. I've got crooked teeth. That's certainly not Brad Pitt. I'm still around and alive, so if they need older guys, I guess they're thinking of me. — James Cromwell

So what do you think?' He asked, holding up the book.
'I think Salinger is a closet paedophile,' I replied placidly and was surprised and comforted by this minuscule, acidic, bitter Sylvia Plath like mocking, sniping tone that had crept into my voice. 'The main character Seymour is a fully grown man and a pervert who befriends young girls with his storytelling and swimming, just to get close enough to groom them in preparation for the inevitable sexual assault he lusts after. You might have noticed for example in A Perfect Day For Bananafish he grabs the young girls-'
'Sybil.'
'He grabs Sybil's ankles while lying on the beach and again when he pushes her in the water,' I continued. 'He goes too far when he kisses the bottom of her foot which makes even a four-year-old yell out in fear, knowing a line had been crossed. Frustrated Seymour walks away and goes back to his hotel where he kills himself in shame. — J.D. Gallagher

He is a man who kicks at cats, said Solembum, as if that summed up Tenga's entire character. — Christopher Paolini

Love is a form of energy, and similar to all forms of energy, it is both essential for life and dangerous. Love can enrich a person's life or destroy a person's world. Love is a catalytic agent of change because it makes us dare to become the best person that we can be. Falling in love for the first time drives a person to the cusp of madness, while the bitter aftermath of a love lost irrevocably alters the positive and negative aspects of a person's character. Withstanding rejection by a lover, we discover within us those ingredients that we will need in order to find our life mate and complete ourselves as man and woman. — Kilroy J. Oldster

There is a very great difference - is there not? - between the temporal and the eternal judgments, a very great difference between a man's reputation and a man's character, for reputation is what men think and say of us, while character is what God and the angels know of us. — Price Collier

There is a natural disposition with us to judge an author's personal character by the character of his works. We find it difficult to understand the common antithesis of a good writer and a bad man. — Edwin Percy Whipple

The enlightened rational man is not unlike the title character in Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni": a likeable rake, intelligent and enterprising, free to do as he pleases, outmaneuvering his honorable, tradition-bound adversaries at every step. One cannot begrudge him his liberty and pursuit of happiness, but looming large above him is his fatal flaw: his mind's maturity does not match his freedom. His pursuits are frivolous, tawdry and destructive. And this, we maintain, is the historical moment of our techno-scientific world: like some allegorical alien race in a science fiction story, we have placed broad freedoms and enormous power in the hands of a flawed creature: ourselves. Empirical reason has brought us here, and by its light we will have to find a way forward. — Danko Antolovic

In Psalm 27:8, David said, "When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek." The face represents the character of a person. If God's man is to ever preach God's Word effectively, then he must not only know the Word of God insightfully, but he must know the God of that Word intimately. — Tom Farrell

Pale hair fell in waves to his shoulders, framing a face mortal females considered a sensual feast. They didn't know the man was actually a devil in angel's skin. They should have, though. He practically glowed with irreverence, and there was an unholy gleam in his green eyes that proclaimed he would laugh in your face while cutting out your heat. Or laugh in your face while you cut out his heart. — Gena Showalter

It is the property of things seen for the first time, or for the first time after long, like the flowers in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edge of sense and that impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passes out of life with the coming of years; but the sight of a loved face is what renews a man's character from the fountain upwards. — Robert Louis Stevenson

I believe with strong conviction that every young man needs a father or a significant father-figure to teach him how to believe in himself, recognize his potential, use his gifts and skills, and pursue his dreams. He needs a father to teach him how to walk with confidence, have strength of character, and yet, remain humble, sensitive, grateful, and responsible. He needs someone to teach him how to respect ladies, love his wife and children, interact properly with neighbors and maneuver in society to enhance his life. The — Michael S. Figgers

Dionysus snorted. "Oh, I didn't want you particularly. Any of you silly heroes would do. That Annie girl - " "Annabeth." "The point is," he said, "I pulled you into party time to deliver a warning. We are in danger." "Gee," I said. "Never would've figured that out. Thanks." He glared at me and momentarily forgot his game. Pac-Man got eaten by the red ghost dude. "Erre es korakas, Blinky!" Dionysus cursed. "I will have your soul!" "Um, he's a video game character," I said. "That's no excuse! And you're ruining my game, Jorgenson!" "Jackson." "Whichever! — Rick Riordan

I had assumed 'a man's character is his fate' meant if my students worked hard they would get good grades, and if they were lazy they would fail - but any idiot could have seen that interpretation. It took no thought whatsoever, and it isn't at all what Joe was trying to teach me. No, what Joe meant was this: my character shapes what my students become, and what they become is my fate. I began to see teaching in a whole new light. From that day forward, I knew everything that happened to my students would haunt me or bless me - and I began to teach as if my happiness depended on their happiness, my successes depended on their successes, and their world was the most important part of my world. — Tucker Elliot

A man's character is best described in his epitaph — Marilyn L. Rice

A man's true character comes out when he's drunk. — Charlie Chaplin

If your clothes are tight , you mean a man can hold tight on you , if they are lose you mean you can hold tight to a man — Bangambiki Habyarimana

I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact. — C.S. Lewis

I think it's really important, when you're redefining a character [ Spider-Man], for the audience to experience things that they haven't experienced, from the ground up. I wanted to build a character. I feel like point of view is a really crucial thing in the story, and that you need to build up the emotional building blocks, so that you can experience all the other emotions in a very specific way, rather than just experiencing it in an intellectual way. — Marc Webb

No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian, his true meannesses, his true imbecilities, to his friends, or even to his wife. Honest autobiography is therefore a contradiction in terms: the moment a man considers himself, even in petto, he tries to gild and fresco himself. Thus a man's wife, however realistic her view of him, always flatters him in the end, for the worst she sees in him is appreciably better, by the time she sees it, than what is actually there. — H.L. Mencken

To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate self-defence. Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect. — Thucydides

An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol. — Ayn Rand

Nothing goes further toward a man's liberation than the act of surviving his need for character. — John Ciardi

My darling sweetheart, you ask me why I love you. I do not know. All I know is that I do love you, and beyond measure. Why do you love me? Surely a more inscrutable problem? You do not know. No one ever knows. 'The heart has its reasons which the reason knows not of.' We love in obedience to a powerful gravitation of our beings, and then try to explain it by recapitulating one another's character just as a man forms his opinions first and then thinks out reasons in support.

What delights me is to recall that our love has evolved. It did not suddenly spring into existence like some beautiful sprite. It developed slowly to perfection. It was forged in the white heat of our experiences. That is why it will always remain. — W.N.P. Barbellion

A man's library opens up his character to the world. — Matthew Pearl

It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to affirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence. — Emanuel Swedenborg

In 77 BC, Cicero used the evidence of a client's well-kept ledger to argue in court for his good character and trustworthiness, saying, 'day-books last for a month, ledgers for ever . . . day-books embrace the memory of a moment, ledgers attest the good faith and conscientiousness which ensure a man's reputation for all time'. — Jane Gleeson-White

If a railroad is bent, the train shall turn over; if a man's character is bent, he shall turn over just like that train. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

In 'The Secret Agent,' it's basically a character that was admired by Theodore Kaczynski, which is some fan mail you don't really want to open. This is a man who is a chemist and who specializes in making bombs and despises humanity. — Robin Williams

In actuality Boaz respected and recognized Ruth's character first. As a result he held her in high regard. You can instantly catch a man's attention, but if you don't have his respect you won't get the relationship you deserve. — Stephan Labossiere