Quotes about Character

In order to see our son differently, Sandra and I had to be different. Our new paradigm was created as we invested in the growth and development of our own character. Paradigms are inseparable from character. Being is seeing in the human dimension. And what we see is highly interrelated to what we are. We can't go very far to change our seeing without simultaneously changing our being, and vice versa.

The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature. E

There are, of course, situations where people have character strength but they lack communication skills, and that undoubtedly affects the quality of relationships as well.

Our character, basically, is a composite of our habits. "Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny," the maxim goes.

Integrity includes but goes beyond honesty.

If there isn't deep integrity and fundamental character strength, the challenges of life will cause true motives to surface and human relationship failure will replace short-term success.

Many people with secondary greatness—that is, social recognition for their talents—lack primary greatness or goodness in their character. Sooner or later, you'll see this in every long-term relationship they have, whether it is with a business associate, a spouse, a friend, or a teenage child going through an identity crisis. It is character that communicates most eloquently. As Emerson once put it, "What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.

literature in the first 150 years or so focused on what could be called the Character Ethic as the foundation of success—things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule.

Things can hurt us physically or economically and can cause sorrow. But our character, our basic identity, does not have to be hurt at all.

Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil—the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life.

There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living.

One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole."2