Quotes & Sayings About Character And Behaviour

People's character is their behaviour - we're all capable of good and evil. — Bertie Carvel

Quite openly, voters selected on the basis of perceived character and past behaviour rather than the views a candidate expressed. Where an individual's nature was not obvious, the Roman people tended to be drawn to a famous name, for there was a sense that virtue and ability were inherited. — Adrian Goldsworthy

Don't allow yourself to be fooled by how "nice" a person appears to be, measure a person's virtuousness by the way in which they treat others with their words and actions . — Miya Yamanouchi

When we connect to Creator, our sacred character develops. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Who you are when you have no power to say anything, and who you become when you have power to say everything will determine whether you are a leader or not. — Israelmore Ayivor

True Christian fortitude consists in strength of mind, through grace, exerted in two things; in ruling and suppressing the evil and unruly passions and affections of the mind; and in steadfastly and freely exerting and following good affections and dispositions, without being hindered by sinful fear or the opposition of enemies ... Though Christian fortitude appears in withstanding and counteracting the enemies that are without us; yet it much more appears in resisting and suppressing the enemies that are within us; because they are our worst and strongest enemies and have greatest advantage against us. The strength of the good soldier of Jesus Christ appears in nothing more than in steadfastly maintaining the holy calm, meekness, sweetness, and benevolence of his mind, amidst all the storms, injuries, strange behaviour, and surprising acts and events of this evil and unreasonable world. — Jonathan Edwards

For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse and the character which was somehow diffused about her behaviour towards others, had something stimulating about it. 3 There was sweetness also in the tones of her voice; and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased, so that in her interviews with Barbarians she very seldom had need of an interpreter, but made her replies to most of them herself and unassisted, whether they were Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes or Parthians. 4 Nay, it is said that she knew the speech of many other peoples also, although the kings of Egypt before her had not even made an effort to learn the native language, and some actually gave up their Macedonian dialect. — Plutarch

There is no obligation for the author of a film to believe in, or to sympathise with, the moral behaviour of his characters. Nor is he necessarily to be accredited with the same opinions as his characters. Nor is it necessary or obligatory for him to believe in the tenet of his construction - all of which is a disclaimer to the notion that the author of Drowning by Numbers believes that all men are weak, enfeebled, loutish, boorish and generally inadequate and incompetent as partners for women. But it's a thought. — Peter Greenaway

Seek perfection of character. Be faithful. Endeavor. Respect others. Refrain from violent behaviour. — Gichin Funakoshi

The virtues of character, behavioural patterns determine how great a nation and people are. — Sunday Adelaja

How often you impress people when you have nothing and how often you oppress them when you have everything is what defines your real character! — Israelmore Ayivor

As it turns out, Plutarch, consciously or unconsciously, touched on a truth that most of us feel, but rarely meditate upon: the little things in behaviour are the door not only to the real character of people but also to their soul. — Nicos Hadjicostis

As long as we speak only in response to other people's disapproving silence, and as long as our words are but an apology, we ourselves are unable to judge the world fairly. Our life is an enigma to others, but their lives are an enigma to us, and our attempts to communicate with them are futile: we see them always as an audience, and in their eyes we are actors. No mind or character can withstand such false relations. They affect not only our behaviour but also our most intimate feelings. — Astolphe De Custine

No matter how heinous someone's behaviour, if you make them a comic character, you can't expect people to hate them. — Chris Morris

In other words, the propositions of philosophy are not factual, but linguistic in character - that is, they do not describe the behaviour of physical, or even mental, objects; they express definitions, or the formal consequences of definitions. Accordingly we may say that philosophy is a department of logic. For we will see that the characteristic mark of a purely logical enquiry, is that it is concerned with the formal consequences of our definitions and not with questions of empirical fact. — A.J. Ayer

These minor, natural flaws did not explain why hers was but the deceptive beauty of the poisoned apple. It was not merely that she was shallow, a creature of simple malice: within her tiny skull a storm raged, hectic, vicious and vengeful. The depths of her character were murky and she herself, had she made the attempt, would struggle to rationalise her behaviour. In morals she was well-versed, for they had been imparted to her through fables as a young child, yet she could find no trace of villainy in her own actions. In her skewed world-view she was set apart. — R.D. Shanks

The commitment of marriage can frequently arouse some rather peculiar behaviour in men and women alike, but the bizarre notion that one can change the character of one's mate seems to occur more often to women than to men. — Alan Jay Lerner

You can be humble without compromising your values. — Israelmore Ayivor

I'm proud of my carefree behaviour [...] I am boisterous, when I choose to be, and simply because I don't behave like a wan and fainting female who has not a thought in her head except try to attract an eligible suitor [...] I shall not conform to how you or anyone else tells me I should behave. I am answerable only to God. — Melanie Dickerson

Judah had failed to grasp that God's loyalty to his own character, and therefore to his own creatures, has serious implications. Some of Judah's leaders had fallen into thinking that, because their nation had been chosen to play a special role for God in history, it did not really matter how the leaders or the nation behaved. This was dangerously irresponsible and undermined the moral fibre of the people, because it led to the rationalization of corrupt and immoral behaviour that was incompatible with the law of God, albeit widely practised in the surrounding nations. — John C. Lennox

Depression is about anger, it is about anxiety, it is about character and heredity. But it is also about something that is in its way quite unique. It is the illness of identity, it is the illness of those who do not know where they fit, who lose faith in the myths they have so painstakenly created for themselves. [ ... ] It is a plague - especially if you add in its various forms of expression, like alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, drug addiction, compulsive behaviour of one kind or another. They're all the same things: attempts to avoid disappearance, or nothingness, or chaos. — Tim Lott

Character is just an invention, but it's an invention that serves as both reason and justification for our behaviour. - Broken Verses — Kamila Shamsie

the strangely elusive and counterintuitive character of the quantum world has encouraged some to suggest that the idea of entities like electrons which can be in unpicturable states such as superpositions of being 'here' and being 'there' is no more than a convenient manner of speaking which facilitates calculations, and that electrons themselves are not to be taken with ontological seriousness. The counterattack of the scientific realist appeals to intelligibility as the key to reality. It is precisely because the assumption of the existence of electrons allows us to understand a vast range of directly accessible phenomena - such as the periodic table in chemistry, the phenomenon of superconductivity at low temperatures and the behaviour of devices such as the laser - that we take their existence seriously. — John Polkinghorne

Dismantle your friend to see how he behaves. If he smiles with a beautiful grin, then take him back, he's worthy to be called a friend. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Even if you surprise yourself with the strength of your own emotions and sudden resolve, it probably wasn't so sudden after all. You were probably squashing down weeks, months or even years of irritation triggered by your job. To your unconscious mind, it wouldn't come as a surprise at all! Emotionally intelligent people understand that we don't always understand our own actions a lot of the time, and they aren't scared to admit it either. People with high EQs respect the way in which the conscious and unconscious minds work together. Even when they end up doing something 'out of character,' they trust that there is a reason for their behaviour, and even if the final result is less than perfect, they resolve to learn from it. The unconscious mind doesn't — Alan Schmidt

If you want to know the strength of a cloth, you inspect the quality of its weave. If you want to understand a person's character, look closely at their interpersonal behaviour or their transactions. — Amish Tripathi

There is no difference between the person who wishes he can change his bad character and did not and the person who never wished for it. Wishes alone don't change the world! — Israelmore Ayivor

A leader's attitude tells how often he will be the winner; his character determines how long he will be the winner. — Israelmore Ayivor

And then certainly, whatsoever you do - your character, your behaviour - is yours, authentically yours. It has your signature on it. Then you are not a carbon copy, you are original. The Zen people call it finding the original face. — Rajneesh

Good character keeps good brand safely. Bad character destroys hard earned brands. — Israelmore Ayivor

On consideration, it is not surprising that Darwin's finches should recognize their own kind primarily by beak characters. The beak is the only prominent specific distinction, and it features conspicuously both in attacking behaviour, when the birds face each other and grip beaks, and also in courtship, when food is passed from the beak of the male to the beak of the female. Hence though the beak differences are primarily correlated with differences in food, secondarily they serve as specific recognition marks, and the birds have evolved behaviour patterns to this end. — David Lack

Never crave to be known for someone you are not. Be who you are in the day and when the lights are off, remain true! — Israelmore Ayivor

Nowadays grandmasters no longer study their opponent's games so much, but they study his character, his behaviour and his temperament in the most thorough fashion. — David Bronstein