Quotes about Character

good character is the indispensable condition and chief determinant of happiness, itself the goal of all human doing.

It is therefore not of small moment whether we are trained from adulthood in one set of habits or another; on the contrary it is of very great, or rather supreme importance.

Moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.

We cannot be prudent without being good.

The orator persuades by moral character when his speech is delivered in such a manner as to render him worthy of confidence; for we feel confidence in a greater degree and more readily in persons of worth in regard to everything in general, but where there is no certainty and there is room for doubt, our confidence is absolute. But this confidence must be due to the speech itself, not to any preconceived idea of the speaker's character;

The ideal man, takes joy in doing favours for others; but he feels ashamed to have others do favours for him. For it is a mark of superiority to confer a kindness; but it is a mark of inferiority to receive it.

To feel or act towards the right person to the right extent at the right time for the right reason in the right way - is not easy, and it is not everyone that can do it, hence to do these things well is a rare, laudable and fine achievement.

For it is about our actions that we deliberate and inquire, and all our actions have a contingent character; hardly any of them are determined by necessity.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

Virtue is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.

But the having such an opinion of themselves seems to have a deteriorating effect on the character: because in all cases men's aims are regulated by their supposed desert, and thus these men, under a notion of their own want of desert, stand aloof from honourable actions and courses, and similarly from external goods.

Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.