Margaret Heffernan Quotes

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

Politicians often reveal most about themselves in unguarded moments.

I always compare human beings to animals. It's a nice way to figure out who they are.

Money doesn't change you; it reveals who you are when you no longer have to be nice.

I realize then that it's not enough to know what someone is called. You have to know who they are.

It is quite impossible to understand the character of a person from one action, however striking that action may be.

If you really want to judge the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Watch a man do his most common actions.

Remember, we can judge better by the conduct of people towards others than by their manner towards ourselves.

No, the only way to know what people think is to watch what they do, not what they say. Do they come back for more? Do you cause them to change their behavior? Can you make them smile?

I just love thinking about what makes people tick

I don't for a minute think that Hitler is like Joan of Arc. But I think that at that deep level of tropisms, Hitler or Stalin must have experienced the same tropisms as anyone else.

Never does a man portray his character more vividly than when proclaiming the character of another.

I think we validate our lives through our actions.

After all, what is your personal identity? It is what you really are, your real self. None of us is what he thinks he is, or what other people think he is, still less what his passport says he is. And it is fortunate for most of us that we are mistaken. We do not generally know what is good for us. That is because, in St. Bernard's language, our true personality has been concealed under the 'disguise' of a false self, the ego, whom we tend to worship in place of God.

Professional psychologists seem to think that they are the only people who make sense out of human actions. The rest of us know that everybody tries to do just this. What else is gossip?

I'm not acting; I'm not playing me. People forget that their actions make them who they are.

May I ask you what these questions tend?' 'Merely to the illustration of your character,' said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. 'I am trying to make it out.' 'And what is your success?' She shook her head. 'I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.

The views of men can only be known, or guessed at, by their words or actions.

I don't say that the drunk man is the real man, and the sober man merely a shell. But you find out something different about people when they're drunk. Of course, you sometimes find that they're not different at all--that you merely get more of the same, perhaps said rather more loudly and incoherently, but basically the same.

... the man in the violent situation reveals those qualities least dispensable in his personality, those qualities which are all he will have to take into eternity with him.

Before we can realize who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.

I think we all have a lot of different personas inside of ourselves. What happens in life is that most people get caught up in presenting one persona that they feel safest in.

I think you learn more about Donald Trump when you learn more about his wife Melania. She can say things, but it's more how much did you get to know her and believe the kind of person she is, that could be married successfully to him. So once you realize that there's something there, that there's substance and that she's got talents and abilities, you think "this is a very complex woman and not just a pretty face" and you know they have a pretty successful marriage and I think that speaks well of him.

Without reflecting that this is the only moment in which you can study character," said the count; "on the steps of the scaffold death tears off the mask that has been worn through life, and the real visage is disclosed.