This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness." - W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham
"A person whose main goal in life is to be a good person will judge each event and situation by asking himself: “What can I do now that will make me a better person?” The exact details of the situation will not make a major difference to him. He focuses on his own attitudes and behavior, and consequently he will look at each situation as a test of his character and spiritual level. His goal is to become more elevated with each action and statement. If he is missing something which he feels he can use, he will not be irritated for he thinks, “With what I have right now, what is the most elevating behavior I can choose?”" - Zelig Pliskin
"The greatness of a popular character is less according to the ratio of his genius than the sympathy he shows with the prejudices and even the absurdities of his time. Fanatics do not select the cleverest, but the most fanatical leaders." - Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine
"If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny. " - André Maurois, born born Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog
"The despotism of will in ideas is styled plan, project, character, obstinacy; its despotism in desires is called passion." - Antoine de Rivarol, also known as Comte de Rivarol
"To the universal religion belong only such dogmas as are absolutely required in order to attain obedience to God, and without which such obedience would be impossible. As for the rest, each man – seeing that he is the best judge of his own character – should adopt whatever he thinks best adapted to strengthen his love of justice." -
"We are in the grip of a scientific materialism, caught in a vicious cycle where our security today seems to depend on regimentation and weapons which will ruin us tomorrow… the intellectual achievements of great scientists are being perverted by the material exploitation of industry and war…I have lived to experience the early results of scientific materialism… have watched pride of workmanship leave and human character decline as efficiency of production lines increased… I have seen the science I worshipped and the aircraft I loved destroying the civilization I expected them to save." - Charles Lindbergh, fully Charles Augustus Lindbergh, nicknamed "Slim,""Lucky Lindy" and "The Lone Eagle"
"Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own. " - Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle
"A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble." - Charles Haddon Spurgeon
"The noblest character is stained by the addition of pride." - Claudian, latin Claudius Claudianus NULL
"The truth is that right actions done for the wrong reasons do not help to build the internal quality or character that is called "virtue," and it is this quality or character that really matters." - C. S. Lewis, fully Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis, called "Jack" by his family
"As diamond cuts diamond, and one hone smoothes a second, all the parts of intellect are whetstones to each other; and genius, which is but the result of their mutual sharpening, is character, too. " - Cyrus Augustus Bartol
"Character is a diamond that scratches every other stone. " - Cyrus Augustus Bartol
"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving." - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
"The State of Israel will prove itself not by material wealth, not by military might or technical achievement, but by its moral character and human values." - David Ben-Gurion, born David Grün
"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." -
"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" - E. O. Wilson, fully Edward Osborne "E.O." Wilson
"The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this nation was built are: Initiative, Imagination, Individuality and Independence." - Eddie Rickenbacker, formally Edward Vernon "Eddie" Rickenbacker
"Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth. " - Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
"Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open." - Elmer G. Leterman
"Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one "object" of love. " - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"Temperament refers to the mode of reaction and is constitutional and not changeable; character is essentially formed by a person’s experiences, especially of those in early life, and changeable, to some extent, by insights and new kinds of experiences. If a person has a choleric temperament, for instance, his mode of reaction is "quick and strong.” But what he is quick or strong about depends on his kind of relatedness, his character. If he is a productive, just, loving person he will react quickly and strongly when he loves, when he is enraged by injustice, and when he is impressed by a new idea. If he is a destructive or sadistic character, he will be quick and strong in his destructiveness or in his cruelty. The confusion between temperament and character has had serious consequences for ethical theory. Preferences with regard to differences in temperament are mere matters of subjective taste. But differences in character are ethically of the most fundamental importance." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a "standing in," not a "falling for." In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving. " - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"Neurosis can be understood best as the battle between tendencies within an individual; deep character analysis leads, if successful, to the progressive solution." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"Any idea is strong only if it is grounded in a person's character structure. No idea is more potent than its emotional matrix. " - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"There is but one quality necessary for the perfect understanding of character, one quality that, if man have it, he may dare to judge—that is, omniscience. Most people study character as a proofreader pores over a great poem: his ears are dulled to the majesty and music of the lines, his eyes are darkened to the magic imagination of the genius of the author; that proofreader is busy watching for an inverted comma, a misspacing, or a wrong font letter. He has an eye trained for the imperfections, the weaknesses." - William George Jordan
"The habit of judging is so nearly incurable, and its cure is such an almost interminable process, that we must concentrate ourselves for a long while on keeping it in check, and this check is to be found in kind interpretations. We must come to esteem very lightly our sharp eye for evil, on which perhaps we once prided ourselves as cleverness. We must look at our talent for analysis of character as a dreadful possibility of huge uncharitableness. We are sure to continue to say clever things, so long as we continue to indulge in this analysis; and clever things are equally sure to be sharp and acid. We must grow to something higher, and something truer, than a quickness in detecting evil. " - Frederick William Faber
"In the life of every man there are influences of a far more real and penetrating character than those which come through the medium of schools or teachers." - Frederick William Farrar
"A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents. " - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied. Political passion and prejudice should have no part. " - George Marshall, fully George Catlett Marshall, Jr.
"It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made." -
"Muscles are in a most intimate and peculiar sense the organs of the will. They have built all the roads, cities and machines in the world, written all the books, spoken all the words, and, in fact done everything that man has accomplished with matter. Character might be a sense defined as a plexus of motor habits." - Granville Stanley Hall
"Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"The Church is not a tribe for the improvement in holiness of people who think it would be pleasant to be holy, a means to the integration of character for those who cannot bear their conflicts. It is a statement of the divine intention for humanity." - Harold Loukes
"Love does not inquire into the character of the recipient but it asks what he needs. It does not love him because he is such-and-such a person but because he is there. In all this it is quite the opposite of natural love: it "does not seek its own". It does not perform the characteristic natural impulse of love and life. Therefore it is basically independent of the conduct of the other person; it is not conditional but absolute. It wants nothing for itself but only for others. Therefore it is also not vulnerable. It never "reacts" but is always "spontaneous", emerging by its own strength -- rather, from the power of God. Love is the real God-likeness of man for which he has been created. In so far as love is in man he really resembles God and shows himself to be the child of God." - Emil Brunner, fully Heinrich Emil Brunner
"What operates in human life with such character and power that it will transform man as he cannot transform himself, saving him from evil and leading him to the best that human life can ever reach?" - Henry Nelson Wieman
"But there is only one avenue of access to that higher life. It is through a radical purging of inner unreality and the full and final surrender of one's whole self, all that one is and all that one possesses, to the imperious command of the Living God. From that surrender, when complete and unreserved, will follow release from defeat or ennui and the gift of utterly new joy and strength. The old life will be cast away; the old harrowing problems will dissolve; one will stand free from the shackles of temptation, self-consciousness, selfishness; for the first time in one's life, one will know the meaning of spiritual freedom. All that one has heard with the hearing of the ears about the life of religion, all that one has dismissed as the familiar exaggeration of religious propagandists or naïve faith no longer possible for intelligent moderns — all this will come vividly alive within one's own soul. One now knows, with a certainty for which there is no parallel, the truth of religion's claims — the absolutely unique character of the dedicated life, the vivid and continuous awareness of God's presence, the priceless worth of complete fellowship with Him, the service which is perfect freedom." - Henry P. Van Dusen
"The main character of any living system is openness." - Ilya, Viscount Prigogine, fully Ilya Romanovich Prigozhin
"Remember, character is not of much value. What is valuable is consciousness -- not conscience but consciousness. Conscience is created by the society. The more foolish you are, the more the society is able to create a conscience in you. It gives you an idea how to live your life. It manipulates you in a very subtle way. It hypnotizes you and conditions you. And the conditioning is so long that you forget completely that these are not your ideas." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"The test of character is: Do you have the courage to stand up for truth even though the heavens fall? Can you smile in trouble? Can you say "No" when evil tempts?" - Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahalraj Vaswani
"Thought is a tremendous force in the life of any individual. Thoughts shape our attitudes. Attitudes mould our character. Character influences our life. By changing our thought pattern, we can change our life." - Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahalraj Vaswani
"A true home is one of the most sacred of places. It is a sanctuary into which men flee from the world’s perils and alarms. It is a resting-place to which at close of day the weary retire to gather new strength for the battle and toils of tomorrow. It is the place where love learns its lessons, where life is schooled into discipline and strength, where character is molded. " - J. R. Miller, fully James Russell Miller
"The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny. " - James Allen
"A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts." - James Allen