Reveals Character Quotes & Sayings

A civil tongue speaks the language of masters. An uncivil tongue reveals character flaws of its master. — John R. Dallas Jr.

Things present themselves to you, and it's how you choose to deal with them that reveals who you are. We all say a lot of things, don't we, about who we are and how we think. But in the end it's your actions, how you respond to circumstance that reveals your character. — Cate Blanchett

There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. History reveals men's deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, unpenetrated and unguessed. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character. — Arthur Schopenhauer

There is nothing in the world that does not speak to us. Everything and everybody reveals its own nature, character and secrets continuously. The more open our inner senses, the more we understand the voice of everything. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

There is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real character, then reveals it by hiding — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Power does not alter a man's character. It merely reveals it. — Carlos Fuentes

Complete freedom debilitates art but reveals much about character. — Walter Darby Bannard

I have never met a truly strong person who didn't have self-respect. I think a lot of inwardly and outwardly directed contempt passes itself off as self-respect: the idea of raising yourself by stepping on someone's shoulders instead of doing it yourself. When I see guys working out for cosmetic reasons, I see vanity exposing them in the worst way, as cartoon characters, billboards for imbalance and insecurity. Strength reveals itself through character. - The Iron — Henry Rollins

You are like the actor who, at the end of the play, with a final word, reveals that he is a different character than the one he appeared to be playing. — Edouard Leve

Religion does not define God's character God reveals it to us in His word and in person, in His Son Jesus Christ. — Jonah Books

One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay. He is in love with the whole of that reality, and will not willingly be deprived even of the most insignificant fragment of it - just like the lovers and men of ambition we described earlier on. — Plato

Stay alert! Don't let someone's words blind you from their behavior ...
They can say all the right things, they can make you feel things you've never felt before, but don't be fooled; their actions will reveal their true character, desires, and priorities.
Behavior speaks; pay attention to what it tells you. Behavior is math; pay attention to what it reveals. — Steve Maraboli

You think football builds character. It does not. It reveals character. — Bill Courtney

There are three types of actions: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters, to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three.' Katin looked toward the front of the car.
The captain gazed through the curving plate that lapped the roof. His yellow eyes fixed Her consumptive light that pulsed fire-spots in a giant cinder. The light was so weak he did not squint at all.
I am confounded, Katin admitted to his jeweled box, 'nevertheless. The mirror of my observation turns and what first seemed gratuitous I see enough times to realize it is a habit. What I suspected as habit now seems part of a great design. While what I originally took as purpose explodes into gratuitousness. The mirror turns again, and the character I thought obsessed by purpose reveals his obsession is only habit; his habits are gratuitously meaningless; while those actions i construed as gratuitous now reveal a most demonic end. — Samuel R. Delany

Every description is calculated for what it reveals, both about the character to whom it refers and the person whose attitude it represents ... As always in these descriptions, she has a knack for the unexpected word: tropical fish in a mural swim "insanely," and the apple trees on Pepper Street produce "wry unpalatable fruit." In "Notes for a Young Writer," a lecture on writing fiction composed as advice to her daughter Sarah, Jackson would relish the "grotesque effect" of the "absolutely wrong word": " 'I will always love you,' he giggled. — Ruth Franklin

Being truly biblical means that my counsel reflects what the entire Bible is about. The Bible is a narrative, a story of redemption, and its chief character is Jesus Christ. He is the main theme of the narrative, and he is revealed in every passage in the book. This story reveals how God harnessed nature and controlled history to send his Son to rescue rebellious, foolish, and self-focused men and women. He freed them from bondage to themselves, enabled them to live for his glory, and gifted them with an eternity in his presence, far from the harsh realities of the Fall. — Paul David Tripp

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I love to share my problems with friends. They think I'm revealing my personal life, but I'm actually revealing theirs. What a person does with what you give reveals the real character of such person, and you can envision and predict a whole set of interactions through their life and based on such reactions. You can even predict a long their marriage will last, or what they will do when you need them. — Robin Sacredfire

Someone said adversity builds character, but someone else said adversity reveals character. I'm pleasantly surprised with my resilience. I persevere, and not just blindly. I take the best, get rid of the rest, and move on, realizing that you can make a choice to take the good. — Brooke Shields

Recently, results of the Human Genome Project have shattered one of Science's fundamental core beliefs, the concept of genetic determinism. We have been led to believe that our genes determine the character of our lives, yet new research surprisingly reveals that it is the character of our lives that controls our genes. Rather than being victims of our heredity, we are actually masters of our genome. — Bruce H. Lipton

One's appearance bespeaks dignity corresponding to the depth of his character. One's concentrated effort, serene attitude, taciturn air, courteous disposition, thoroughly polite bearing, gritted teeth with a piercing look - each of these reveals dignity. Such outward appearance, in short, comes from constant attentiveness and seriousness. — Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Money doesn't change you, it reveals you. Money is just an enabler, whatever a person chooses to do with it is a reflection of their character. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name.
— Evan Esar

Boredom has a bad rap. Its true character reveals you are deep inside your comfort zone. Boredom is a docent beckoning toward the edges of a labyrinth. — Gina Greenlee

Work does not "give" dignity to our lives through the excellence or happiness it fosters. The dignity of work comes less from its ideal promise than from the way we show, through it, a determination to endure what is difficult for the sake of discharging our responsibilities and contributing to society. It is less the source of our happiness than the illustration that we deserve happiness. Through work we reveal our tough minded commitment in the face of conditions that cannot bend exactly to our will. When this commitment brings a partial triumph over an unaccommodating world, work illuminates something of the dignity that resides in us independent of the character of our work. It expresses a kind of defiance, for we willfully ignore the ultimate resistance of a world we yet try to shape. Thus work reveals, though it cannot produce, the dignity of those who take their condition to be at least partly of their own making. — Russell Muirhead

It was like every attitude or action which reveals a man's deep and hidden character; they bear no relation to what he has previously said, and we cannot confirm our suspicions by the culprit's evidence, for he will admit nothing; we are reduced to the evidence of our own senses, and we ask ourselves, in the face of this detached and incoherent fragment of recollection, whether indeed our senses have not been the victims of a hallucination ... — Marcel Proust

All novelists know that crisis reveals character. — Salman Rushdie

Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me. — William James

How hard you work at correcting your faults reveals your character. — John Wooden

I'm troubled by how much I like Rowan Williams. I think it reveals character flaws in myself that I'd rather not think about. The softly spoken soon-to-be-former Archbishop of Canterbury is my secret crush, my weird pash, and my guilty pleasure. — Robert Webb

Your words may be heard but your attitude will be felt. Your attitude reveals your character so never try to deceive anyone with mere words. Word/Talk is cheap but character is key. It costs nothing to be authentic. Learn to be a man or woman of substance! — Kemi Sogunle

When someone speaks he looks at a mouth, not eyes and their colors, which, it seems to him, will always alter depending on the light of a room, the minute of the day. Mouths reveal insecurity or smugness or any other point on the spectrum of character. For him they are the most intricate aspect of faces. He's never sure what an eye reveals. but he can read how mouths darken into callousness, suggest tenderness. One can often misjudge an eye from its reaction to a simple beam of sunlight. — Michael Ondaatje

God wants us to relieve suffering, pursue justice, facilitate reconciliation, and free the heart to love, but He desires for us to do so in a way that reveals His Character. It is not enough just to do well for others or to do things well. We must do well in our unique way in order to reveal the vast creativity of a God who loves to bring change through the most unlikely channels. — Dan B. Allender

Entrepreneurship does not build character; it reveals character. — Jeffrey Fry

If you're really mind-full, and if you underline that aspect of fullness, wholeness, or wholeheartedness, it reveals the gift character of everything. — David Steindl-Rast

Nothing is sillier than the creative writing teacher's dictum
"Write about what you know." But whether you're writing
about people or dragons, your personal observation of how
things happen in the world - how character reveals itself - can
turn a dead scene into a vital one. Preliminary good advice
might be: Write as if you were a movie camera. Get exactly
what is there. All human beings see with astonishing accuracy,
not that they can necessarily write it down. — John Gardner

How one stands up to any sort of allegation in the heat of political battle reveals the strength and nature of your character. It's one of the reasons we have campaigns. — Tammy Bruce

Time reveals character. — Alan Cohen

No one likes to lose. It is how you handle the loss that reveals your character. — Gail Ranstrom

Meditation may require a lifetime to master, but it will have been a lifetime well spent ... If you want to judge your progress, ask yourself these questions: Am I more loving? Is my judgment sounder? Do I have more energy? Can my mind remain calm under provocation? Am I free from the conditioning of anger, fear, and greed? Spiritual awareness reveals itself as eloquently in character development and selfless action as in mystical states. — Eknath Easwaran

Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness ... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast. — Mark Twain

I think it was coach Lombardi that said, 'Adversity doesn't build character, it reveals it.' And that's so true. — Mike Sherman

the spectacle is an affirmation of appearances and an identification of all human social life with appearances. But a critique that grasps the spectacle's essential character reveals it to be a visible negation of life - a negation that has taken on a visible form. — Guy Debord

Sport does not just build character, it reveals it. — George F. Will

A man reveals his character even in the simplest things he does. — Jean De La Bruyere

The Bible nowhere enters into an argument to prove the person and being of God. It assumes His being and reveals His person and character. — Edward McKendree Bounds

It's not what a person says but what he does that reveals his true character. — Philip Jose Farmer

He faces the burdens of belittlement a third time as he grows older, and settles into an existence that he has embraced, or that has been forced upon him. A carapace of routine, of compromise, of silent surrenders, of half-term solutions, and of diminished consciousness begins to form around him. He turns himself over to the rigidified version of the self: the character. He begins to die small deaths, many times over. He fails to die only once, which is what he would desire if he were able fully to recognize the value of life. This third encounter with belittlement reveals belittlement for what it in fact is: death by installments. — Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Adversity does not build character,it reveals it — James Lane Allen

Skyline reveals a city's purpose and character. Oxford had its dreaming spires; Manhattan its glittering towers; Edinburgh its eccentric spikes. — Alexander McCall Smith

A man's character reveals itself most clearly when he makes a choice under pressure. — Dan Millman

Thoughts mold your features. Thoughts lift your soul heavenward or drag you toward hell. ... As nothing reveals character like the company we like and keep, so nothing foretells futurity like the thoughts over which we brood. ... To have the approval of your conscience when you are alone with your thoughts is like being in the company of true and loving friends. To merit your own self-respect gives strength to character. Conscience is the link that binds your soul to the spirit of God. — David O. McKay

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses and avoids. — Aristotle.

It has been said that a nation reveals its character by the values it upholds. — Kay Granger

I think it's always interesting to learn what the seemingly spontaneous one-nighter actually reveals about a character. — Kristan Higgins

Nothing reveals a man's character better than the kind of joke at which he takes offense. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

[W]hile people are making a big fuss over Gruber's calling Americans stupid, they ought to be far more outraged that he admitted the administration purposefully lied to us. This is the real story, and it reveals, once again, the character and mentality of this entire administration, for Gruber was speaking not merely for himself but about the entire administration, beginning with Obama. — David Limbaugh

One line of dialogue that rings true reveals character in a way that pages of description can't. — Anne Lamott

Absolute power doesn't corrupt, but rather, reveals character. — Orrin Woodward

An act of heroism, of extraordinary courage, the grandeur of it, won't easily inspire us to act in imitation, but it can inspire us to emulate its author. For that, we should learn what we can of the whole experience of the subject, the hero's life, as it was before and after, and believe that trying to emulate the character it reveals is one tried way to prepare for the tests that might await us and gain hope that our courage will not be wanting in the moment. — John McCain

There is no kind obondage which life lays upon us that may not yield both sweetness and strength; and nothing reveals a man's character more fully than the spirit in which he bears his limitations. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Technological rationality reveals its political character as it becomes the great vehicle of better domination, creating a truely totalitarian universe in which society and nature, mind and body are kept in a state of permanent mobilization for the defense of this universe. — Herbert Marcuse

The way you make an omelet reveals your character. — Anthony Bourdain

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rejection reveals your character. — Robert G. Allen

From the beginning it was drilled into me that a golf course was a place where character fully reveals itself
both its strengths and its flaws. As a result, I learned early not only to fix my ball marks but also to congratulate an opponent on a good shot, avoid walking ahead of a player preparing to shoot, remain perfectly still when someone else was playing, and a score of other small courtesies that revealed, in my father's mind, one's abiding respect for the game. — Arnold Palmer

This is difficult to comprehend when one pauses to consider the character of Christ. Admittedly there have been many false caricatures of this Person, but an unbiased look at His life quickly reveals an individual of enormous compassion and incredible integrity. — W. Phillip Keller

To be conservative in politics is to take one's bearings not from the latest bright idea about how to make a better world, but by looking carefully at what the past reveals both about the kind of people we are and the problems that concern us. As we get older, we often become conservative in our habits, in our family practices, and in our recognition of the richness of our civilization, but this evolution of our character into a set of habits in no way blocks adventurousness. The old no less than the young may be found starting new enterprises, sailing around the world, and solving arcane academic questions. But it is in the ordinary business of life that we find our excitement, not in foolish collective dreams of political perfection. — Kenneth Minogue

Perhaps no custom reveals our character as a Nation so clearly as our celebration of Thanksgiving Day. — Ronald Reagan

The question you'll need to ask yourself as your heart is filled with fear is: "Do you know God's heart?" Do you know Him that intimately? Do you trust Him with all of your heart, instead of leaning unto your own understanding? Most of us don't, especially when life is falling apart at the seams. If you want to know God's heart, if you want to trust Him and have the kind of peace that comes with that, you're going to have to read His word. The Bible is His voice and it reveals His character. — Cherie Hill

Nothing reveals character more than self-sacrifice. So the highest knowledge we have of God is through the gift of His Son. — William Torrey Harris

I have to remember that giving honor reveals more about my character than the character of the other person. — Lysa TerKeurst

What a person says and does in ordinary moments when when no one is looking reveals more about true character than grand actions taken while in the spotlight. Our true character is revealed by normal, consistent, everyday attitudes and behavior, not by self-conscious words or deeds or rare acts of moral courage. — Michael Josephson

What's great about writing a screenplay is that the subtext of the scene, what is not said, can sometimes be more important that what is said. Again, dialogue serves two basic functions in the scene: Either it moves the story forward or it reveals information about the character. — Syd Field

What do you believe reveals more about a man's character, his arrogance or his attempt to disguise it? — Aaron B. Powell