Character Refinement Quotes

I want to change the bad boy image that has stuck for a bit because I don't think I am at all how I have been portrayed. I would like that to change because it's awful to hear and read what is said of you.

The aim of spiritual formation is not behavior modification but the transformation of all those aspects of you and me where behavior comes from...Circumcision of the heart.

In the pain, the agony, and the heroic endeavors of life, we pass through a refiner's fire, and the insignificant and the unimportant in our lives can melt away like dross and make our faith bright, intact, and strong.

Sometimes, God uses difficult people, like sandpaper, to rub the rough edges off us.

Gratitude is a mark of a noble soul and a refined character.

If you're serious about sanctification, you can expect to experience heart-wrenching moments that try your faith, your endurance, and your patience.

In our Mechanics' Fair, there must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpenter's planes, and baking troughs, but also some few finer instruments,--rain-gauges, thermometers, and telescopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who note the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the bystander.

Good men study to spiritualize their bodies; bad men to incarnate their souls.

I've done TV, but never where you're given this much time to live with a character, to study the tone and hone it and repair stuff, to go back and watch old episodes and go, "Oh no, that's a misstep. That's a victory. I should do more of that, less of that."

The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.

God sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person, more that the restraint of ten vicious.

Even little adjustments in promos or being a heel, different mannerisms in the ring, every week there's something I can do better. The only time I get flustered is when I try to do too many things at once. It's better to do one thing each week and work on that.

A person's character is what it is. It's a little like a marriage - only without the option of divorce. You can work on it and try to make it better, but basically you have to take the bitter with the sweet.

Adde, quod ingénues didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores, nec sinit esse fervos. To be instructed in the arts, softens the manners and makes men gentle.

People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.

As we lay hold upon the truth of God, its influence must affect us. It must elevate us. It must remove from us every imperfection.

In order for good to blossom it must be cultivated and exercised by constant practice, and to be truly righteous there is required a daily pruning of the evil growth of our characters by a daily repen- tance from sin.

People mature with age and experience. I hope I more resemble a fine wine than bad vinegar.

No matter how dear you are to God, if pride is harboured in your spirit, He will whip it out of you. They that go up in their own estimation must come down again by His discipline

God's arrows of affliction are sharp and painful so He can get our attention. He won't let His beloved children get away with sin because He knows it robs us of blessings, opportunities, and even character refinement.

Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value: but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their luster: and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.

Any character can find an audience and work if you have passion for that character. You might have to just scrape off the dirt and the barnacles and pull it out and highlight it.

To me a saint is a severely edited sinner. That's what I think.

A gentleman is not born but crafted. He had to work on himself in the same way as a sculptor shaped a rough stone and made it a thing of beauty.

For me, the attraction of TV is that you continue to get to tell those stories and refine those characters. The other thing is that TV, in the last years, got really, really, really good.