Motivational Quotes

Character

Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Character

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Your character will be what you yourself choose to make it.

Lubbock, Sir John

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity.

Fame is what you have taken, character is what you give. When to this truth you awaken, then you begin to live.

Taylor, Bayard

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

King Jr. Martin Luther

If an ass goes traveling it will not come home a horse.

Proverb

The superior man will watch over himself when he is alone. He examines his heart that there may be nothing wrong there, and that he may have no cause of dissatisfaction with himself.

Confucius

Character is the impulse reined down into steady continuance.

Parkhurst, Charles H.

Noble character is best appreciated in those ages in which it can most readily develop.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

10.

When God measures man, He puts the tape around his heart -- not his head.

Guideposts

11.

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

Oscar Levant

12.

Wherever man goes to dwell his character goes with him.

Proverb, African

13.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids.

Aristotle

14.

You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

15.

Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.

George Santayana

16.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

Hall, Manly

17.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.

Keller, Helen

18.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

Shakespeare, William

19.

They attack the one man with their hate and their shower of weapons. But he is like some rock which stretches into the vast sea and which, exposed to the fury of the winds and beaten against by the waves, endures all the violence

Virgil

20.

There's a fine line between character building and soul destroying.

Hay, Colin

21.

You can buy a person's time; you can buy their physical presence at a given place; you can even buy a measured number of their skilled muscular motions per hour. But you can not buy enthusiasm... you can not buy loyalty. You can not buy the devotion of hearts, minds, or souls. You must earn these.

Francis, Clarence

22.

Strong feelings do not necessarily make a strong character. The strength of a man is to be measured by the power of the feelings he subdues not by the power of those which subdue him.

William Carleton

23.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

24.

Those who cross the sea change only the climate, not their character.

Horace

25.

Testimony is like an arrow shot from a long bow and the force of it depends on the strength of the arm from which it was shot. Argument is like a bullet fired from a gun and has equal force even when issued from a child.

26.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

28.

The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

29.

Clear conscience never fears midnight knocking.

Proverb, Chinese

30.

Character is another thing that is formed in youth and reformed in marriage.

31.

You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jelly beans.

Reagan, Ronald

32.

Everyone has three characters, that which they exhibit, that which they have, and that which they think they have.

Karr, Alphonse

33.

One stumble is enough to deface the character of an honorable life.

Estrange, L.

34.

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

35.

Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.

Lowell, James Russell

36.

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

Thoreau, Henry David

37.

What you possess in the world will be found at the day of your death to belong to someone else. But what you are will be yours forever.

Dyke, Henry Van

38.

For character too is a process and an unfolding... among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?

Eliot, George

39.

Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou

Akhenaton

40.

Instill the love of you into all the world, for a good character is what is remembered.

Merikare

41.

The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.

Voltaire

42.

I appreciate people who are civil, whether they mean it or not. I think: Be civil. Do not cherish your opinion over my feelings. There's a vanity to candor that isn't really worth it. Be kind.

Richard Greenberg

43.

A rich man has no need of character.

Proverb, Hebrew

44.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

I could never think well of a man's intellectual or moral character, if he was habitually unfaithful to his appointments.

Nathaniel Emmons

46.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.