True Character Quotes

She scanned the Starveil posts, her mood darkening. Spartan had been a part of her life since elementary school. Losing him felt like having a piece of herself torn away. No amount of fix-it fics or alternate universes could change the fact her one true character had died. ~ Danika Stone

I've learned one thing: you can only really get to know a person after a row. Only then can you judge their true character! ~ Anne Frank

THE TRUE CHARACTER OF A PERSON IN SEEN WHEN HE/SHE IS ALONE ... ~ VENKATA NAVEEN KASAGANA

When you can't provide for them anymore, their true character comes out. They treat you like pure shit. To make matters worse, they talk trash behind your back, as if what you've done for them was useless. That's how some people are - they will use you up and break you down until you have nothing left to give them or yourself. People who do not have anything to lose will make sure you lose everything you've work so hard for. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

But in all His dealings with His creatures God has maintained the principles of righteousness by revealing sin in its true character-by demonstrating that its sure result is misery and death. ~ Ellen G. White

You only really get to know a person after a fight. Only then can you judge their true character! Yours, ~ Anne Frank

No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian, his true meannesses, his true imbecilities, to his friends, or even to his wife. Honest autobiography is therefore a contradiction in terms: the moment a man considers himself, even in petto, he tries to gild and fresco himself. Thus a man's wife, however realistic her view of him, always flatters him in the end, for the worst she sees in him is appreciably better, by the time she sees it, than what is actually there. ~ H.L. Mencken

Act in a way that is congruent with your true character. ~ Robin S. Sharma

In books and in life, you need to read several pages before someone's true character is revealed. ~ Gail Carson Levine

You can discover a person's true character by examining how their actions align with their words. ~ Janice Anderson

O sin, how you paint your face! how you flatter us poor mortals on to death! You never appear to the sinner in your true character; you make fair promises, but you never fulfil one; your tongue is smoother than oil, but the poison of asps is under your lip! ~ Hosea Ballou

You, of all people, should know that you can't tell a single thing about a person's true character if you both want the same thing. That's like a dog and a cat getting along because they both want to kill the mouse. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

No short-cut that tries to bypass the patient unfolding of the true character of God, and our relationship to him as his children, can ever succeed in providing long-term spiritual therapy. ~ Sinclair B. Ferguson

To find a man's true character, play golf with him. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Adversity shows our true character. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

No one can long hide behind a mask; the pretense soon lapses into the true character. ~ Seneca The Younger

You can tell the true character of a man by how his dog and his kids react to him." "If you don't believe in God, you should believe in the technology that's going to make us immortal. ~ Timothy Ferriss

Don't tell me who you are, show me. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Jesus Christ said more about money than about any other single thing because, when it comes to a man's real nature, money is of first importance. Money is an exact index to a man's true character. All through Scripture there is an intimate correlation between the development of a man's character and how he handles his money. ~ Richard Halverson

Some say knowledge is power, but that is not true. Character is power. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals. ~ Paul McCartney

It's only when it comes to crunch time that people's true character comes out. ~ Virginia Wade

I'm less concerned with how hard you can work and how much time and effort you can dedicate to a project when everything is going right.
Plenty of people can do that.
I'm more concerned with how hard you can work and how much time and effort you can dedicate to a project when everything is going wrong.
That's a rarity and shows true honor, true character and will lead you that much closer to success. ~ Loren Weisman

There is no effort in collecting judgements. Being wise with them requires a act of true character. ~ Joel Kirkpatrick

Stressful situations cause alterations in behavior that reveal true character, Tibbs. If a person gradually begins acting like someone else altogether, you may very well find that they *are* someone else altogether" -Inspector Percival Pensive ~ Jessica Lawson

And the most important thing - apart from telling a good, believable story, and being a true character - is to be someone the audience will care about, even if you're playing a murderer or rapist. ~ Anna Friel

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking. ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

The only way to truly know a person is to argue with them. For when they argue in full swing, then they reveal their true character. ~ Anne Frank

People reveal their true character when they're off center. ~ Ted Dekker

Acting has helped me understand people, not only because you are acting as a character, but also because you are watching other actors work. That really helps you identify in life when someone is acting, not being true. ~ Steve Martin

The true character of wu wei is not mere inactivity but perfect action-because it is act without activity. In other words, it is action not carried out independently of heaven and earth and in conflict with the dynamism of the whole, but in perfect harmony with the whole. It is not mere passivity, but it is action that seems both effortless and spontaneous because performed "rightly," in perfect accordance with our nature and with our place in the scheme of things. It is completely free because there is in it no force and no violence. ~ Thomas Merton

The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its children. ~ Nelson Mandela

It may be true that the only reason the comic book industry now exists is for this purpose, to create characters for movies, board games and other types of merchandise. ~ Alan Moore

You may gain a position, but that does not mean you've gained leadership. You may lose position, but that does not mean you've lost leadership! When you gain true character, you can leadership and when you lose it, you cease to be a leader! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

True character stands the test of emergencies. Do not be mistaken, it is weakness from which the awakening is rude. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I painted two pictures of myself lately, one of which has rather the true character ... I always think photographs abominable, and I don't like to have them around, particularly not those of persons I know and love ... photographic portraits wither much sooner than we ourselves do, whereas the painted portrait is a thing which is felt, done with love or respect for the human being that is portrayed. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. ~ George Washington

The deceit in loving a woman sometimes, is that most women fall in love with assumed personality, but eventually live with their true character. ~ Auliq Ice

It was easy to be proud of the kid who got straight A's and who made the winning basket-a kid the world already adored. But true character showed when you could find something to love in a child everyone else hated. ~ Jodi Picoult

It's not our mistakes that define us. It's the lessons we learn that show our true character. ~ Cassia Leo

The only way of really finding out a man's true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

It is only when one is under extreme duress that one's true character is revealed. ~ Christopher Earle

Now Brutus had deliberately assumed a mask to hide his true character. When he learned of the murder by Tarquin of the Roman aristocrats, one of the victims being his own brother, he had come to the conclusion that the only way of saving himself was to appear in the king's eyes as a person of no account. If there were nothing in his character for Tarquin to fear, and nothing in his fortune to covet, then the sheer contempt in which he was held would be a better protection than his own rights could ever be. Accordingly he pretended to be a half-wit and made no protest at the seizure by Tarquin of everything he possessed. He even submitted to being known publicly as the 'Dullard' (which is what his name signifies), that under cover of that opprobrious title the great spirit which gave Rome her freedom might be able to bide its time. On this occasion he was taken by Arruns and Titus to Delphi less as a companion than as a butt for their amusement; and he is said to have carried with him, as his gift to Apollo, a rod of gold inserted into a hollow stick of cornel-wood - symbolic, it may be, of his own character.
The three young men reached Delphi, and carried out the king's instructions. That done, Titus and Arruns found themselves unable to resist putting a further question to the oracle. Which of them, they asked, would be the next king of Rome? From the depths of the cavern came the mysterious answer: 'He who shall be the first to kiss his mother shall hold in Rome su ~ Livy

We need to be more grateful. I think there is no true character without gratitude. It is one of the marks of a real strong character to have a feeling of thanksgiving and gratitude for blessings. We need more of that spirit in our homes, in our daily associations, in the church, everywhere. It doesn't cost anything, and it is so easy to cultivate. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

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

In fact, were it given to our human eye to see into the consciences of others, we would judge a man much more surely from what he dreams than from what he thinks. There is will in the thought, there is none in the dream. Even in the gigantic and the ideal, the dream, which is completely spontaneous, takes and keeps the form of our mind. Nothing springs more directly and more sincerely from our innermost souls than our unreflected and indefinite aspirations, much more than in ideas, which are structured, studied, and compared, can we find the true character of each man. Our chimeras are most like us. Each of us dreams the unknown and the impossible according to his own nature. ~ Victor Hugo

Persons in great stations have seldom their true character drawn till several years after their death. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunities of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it. ~ Joseph Addison

You find out the true character of a person when they don't take advantage of a sure thing. ~ Alison G. Bailey

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

So we all know the cliché characters: the Irish cop, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the writer with a drinking problem, and so forth. Clichés often exist for a reason, of course, and sometimes it's okay to use a tried and true character. But not always. Populate your stories with only stock characters and there won't be any reason to read your tales over anyone else's. ~ Craig Hart

There seemed to be no end to the imaginative damage people could do to each other when the influences of societal pressures were removed. It tended to bring out one's true character, and as he had discovered during his thirty-eight years of life, some people had true darkness lurking just below the surface. ~ Steve R. Yeager

True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. ~ Edward O. Wilson

A positive attitude and an open mind are true characteristics of all good fishermen ~ Kevin VanDam

For an actor, playing one character and transitioning to a completely different one is a dream come true. ~ Dean Norris

There was a saying that a man's true character was revealed in defeat. I thought it was also revealed in victory. ~ Alison Goodman

Our true character comes out in the way we pray. ~ Oswald Chambers

There is no justice in the world's censorious eyes. They will not wait to learn a man's true character;
Though no wrong has been done them, one look - and they hate.

- Medea ~ Euripides

In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and repossession, and suffer his reason and feelings to determine for themselves; and that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of man, and generously enlarge his view beyond the present day. ~ Thomas Paine

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

If there be a mind that, not perceiving in the narratives we have compared the fingermarks of tradition, and hence the legendary character of these evangelical anecdotes, still leans to the historical interpretation, whether natural or supernatural; that mind must be alike ignorant of the true character both of legend and of history, of the natural and the supernatural. ~ David Friedrich Strauss

A man's true character comes out when he's drunk. ~ Charlie Chaplin

The true character of ministry is a servants heart. ~ Harold Warner

If you want to discover the true character of a person, you have only to observe what they are passionate about. ~ Shannon L. Alder

It is normal to enjoy praise and dislike criticism. True character is when you prevent either from affecting you in a negative matter. ~ John Wooden

To hold typically liberal views, therefore, and to assume that if we liked we could all settle down to love one another and live in perfect amity and harmony together, is possible only to those idealists who are congenitally blind to the true character of all life; whilst as for those numskulls who begin to see and think of the Will to Power only when figures like Napoleon, Stalin or Hitler appear, and who overlook it wholly in themselves, their wives, their children and their cat, they are even more dangerous than the idealists aforesaid ~ Anthony Mario Ludovici

Maybe you have to live under cover for a while before you can find your true character. ~ Hugo Hamilton

Introspection is the overture to one's true character. ~ Josh Brekke

That which the sober man keeps in his breast, the drunken man lets out at the lips. Astute people, when they want to ascertain a man's true character, make him drunk. ~ Martin Luther

Biographer diagnoses reaction to restriction as a tell of true character. Some use even prison as a time of reflection and planning. Others, like Churchill, quickly chafe at missing interaction and opportunity. ~ William Manchester

In the first two years this is a man [Clinton] who tried his best to balance the budget, to reform health care, to fight for gay rights, to support personal freedoms. Couldn't those be considered doing the right things, evidence of true character? ~ Bryant Gumbel

Perhaps myself the first, at some expense of popularity, to unfold the true character of Jefferson, it is too late for me to become his apologist. Nor can I have any disposition to do it. I admit that his politics are tinctured with fanaticism, that he is too much in earnest in his democracy, that he has been a mischievous enemy to the principle measures of our past administration, that he is crafty & persevering in his objects, that he is not scrupulous about the means of success, nor very mindful of truth, and that he is a contemptible hypocrite. ~ Alexander Hamilton

Failure teaches us the most important life lesson; it's how we find our true character. ~ J.C. Phillips

For many men value appearances more than reality - thus they violate what's right. Everyone's prepared to sigh over some suffering man, though no sorrow really eats their hearts, or they can pretend to join another person's happiness forcing their faces into smiling masks. But a good man discerns true character - he's not fooled by eyes feigning loyalty, favouring him with watered-down respect. ~ Aeschylus

Love for others is the foundation of leadership.
Simplicity is the language of leadership.
Authenticity is the true character of leadership. ~ Farshad Asl

True freedom is the capacity for acting according to one's true character, to be altogether one's self, to be self-determined and not subject to outside coercion. ~ Corliss Lamont

Maybe, it is just enough to believe with a positive heart that people didn't let you down. It could be just this: They couldn't give you the compassion you really wanted based on where their heart is right now. Maybe, not now, but years later they will catch the memory of you in a quiet moment. There on that Sunday morning, a light will shine through the fog of lies, misunderstanding and frustration they built inside their angry mind about your true character. And, when it does, the shadows will be casted out to reveal a scared and hurt little boy or girl that just wanted to be loved, but went about it all wrong. Maybe, on that day, the whisper of their gratitude for your love will find its way back to your heart. And when that day comes, you will find yourself smiling all day long and not know why. ~ Shannon L. Alder

No one knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan and raised an adolescent. ~ Marcelene Cox

The true character of epistolary style is playfulness and urbanity. ~ Joseph Joubert

People don't change, they just have momentary steps outside of their true character ~ Chad Kultgen

He'd learned pretty early that the illusioned virtuous creatures were no more than that - illusions. Innocence was a community that was used up and consumed fairly quickly. More often than not, innocence was just ignorance, and the true character revealed itself before long - twisted and greedy like the rest. ~ Camille Oster

Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man. ~ Edmund Burke

Hypocrites - they wear gorgeous cloaks lined with lead; pretty outside, awful inside; heavy cloaks force them to behave sedately, although seething within; cloak true character in false appearance. ~ Dante Alighieri

And though I do not approve of your appropriation of the Bean King tradition"-he paused to find and issue a pointed glare at his favorite baker-"your scheme to reveal Baron Craven's true character worked. ~ Michele Sinclair

The Reformation did not directly touch the question of the true character of God's church. ~ John Nelson Darby

People who don't know the true character of God - who don't believe He is merciful, gracious and slow to anger - can never have a close, personal, intimate relationship with Him. ~ Joyce Meyer

Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within. ~ Plutarch

It is unfair to attribute virtues beyond a person's true character. ~ Billy Graham

If you expose what it is that we're doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we're doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have [sic] been about. It's what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It's to create a climate of fear, so that nobody will bring accountability to them.
It's not going to work. I think it's starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can't be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we're certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they've been doing. ~ Glenn Greenwald

Your true character Is most accurately measured by how you treat those who can do 'Nothing' for you ~ Mother Teresa

Dreams do come true. But it will involve a lot of hard work, a lot of dedication, a lot of studying. ~ Gabriel Campisi

The true writer must write not the acceptable but the true. ~ David Mamet

Can we make promises to each other, as if we were truly married? Can we swear to be true and faithful and love only each other and all those things? Because I'm in such pain, Margherita, I need to have you, I need to know that you're mine. I've been in torment since I first saw you. No, since I first heard you singing from you tower height. Please, mia bella bianca, please let us swear to each other. Love breaks all spells, I know it does. Wear my ring and let me know-"
She stopped his words with her mouth, cupping both hands about his face. Then she sat back to show him the ring on her finger. "I swear it all. Is that good enough? Because I really need you to kiss me again. ~ Kate Forsyth

The music was more than music- at least what we are used to hearing. The music was feeling itself. The sound connected instantly with something deep and joyous. Those powerful moments of true knowledge that we have to paper over with daily life. The music tapped the back of our terrors, too. Things we'd lived through and didn't want to ever repeat. Shredded imaginings, unadmitted longings, fear and also surprisingly pleasures. No, we can't live at that pitch. But every so often something shatters like ice and we are in the river of our existence. We are aware. And this realization was in the music, somehow, or in the way Shamengwa played it. ~ Louise Erdrich

It is practically an axiom in psychiatry that precocious intellect combined with physical weakness can give rise to many unpleasant character traits - avarice, delusions of grandeur , and obsessive masturbation, to name just a few. ~ Sam Savage

I've got a great support group, real and true friends and I'm moving forward with my life. I was sad and wanted to make things work but I'm completely fine now. I'm moving on. ~ Camille Grammer

There's a Greek legend - no, it's in something Plato wrote - about how true lovers are really two halves of the same person. It says that people wander around searching for their other half, and when they find him or her, they are finally whole and perfect. The thing that gets me is that the story says that originally all people were really pairs of people, joined back to back, and that some of the pairs were man and man, some woman and woman, and others man and woman. What happened was that all of these double people went to war with the gods, and the gods, to punish them, split them all in two. That's why some lovers are heterosexual and some are homosexual, female and female, or male and male. ~ Nancy Garden

Respect is not an obligation nor a favour, it takes a bigger person to give or show some whether it is returned or not. ~ Unarine Ramaru

I feel my characters are valid, my characters are people, my characters have hope. Hope is the thing that'll take us through. ~ Jack Kirby

The true ethical test is not only the readiness to save the victims, but also - even more, perhaps - the ruthless dedication to annihilating those who made them victims. ~ Slavoj Zizek

The way to happiness is by truth. Seek to be true in all things and you will have a foundation to build your future. ~ Shannon L. Alder