Quotes about Character

Things good and bad will happen to us, of course. But what our life amounts to, at least for those who reach full age, is largely, if not entirely, a matter of what we become within.

So the idea conveyed is an absolutely fatal one - that to follow him simply means to try to behave as he did when he was on the spot, under pressure or persecution or in the spotlight. There is no realization that what he did in such cases was, in large and essential measure, the natural outflow of the life he lived when not on the spot.

Great power requires great character if it is to be a blessing and not a curse, and that character is something we only grow toward.

So my fifth point is this: spiritual formation is the process whereby the inmost being of the individual takes on the quality or character of Jesus himself.

Spiritual formation is a matter of reworking all aspects of the self.

One has to feel strong revulsion toward the wrong feeling one now has or is likely to have and at the same time strong attraction to good feeling that one does not now feel.

Lord, when we are wrong, make us willing to change, and when we are right, make us easy to live with!

Heroism, generally, is totally out of place in the spiritual life, until we grow to the point at which it would never be thought of as heroism anyway.

We cannot behave "on the spot" as he did and taught if in the rest of our time we live as everybody else does.

What God gets out of our lives—and, indeed, what we get out of our lives—is simply the person we become.

Prayer is, above all, a means of forming character. It combines freedom and power with service and love.

God both develops and, for our good, tests our character by leaving us to decide. He calls us to responsible citizenship in his kingdom by saying—in effect or in reality—as often as possible, "My will for you in this case is that you to decide on your own".