Motivational Quotes

Character

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

Best Quotes about Character

There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.

Disraeli, Benjamin

If a man character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.

Thackeray, William M.

No artist work is so high, so noble, so grand, so enduring, so important for all time, as the making of character in a child.

Cushman, Charlotte Saunders

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

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

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

Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared; but only men of character are trusted.

To succeed is nothing -- it's an accident. But to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different: it is character.

Leneru, Marie

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

You don't get in life what you want; you get in life what you are.

Brown, Les

11.

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

Karr, Alphonse

12.

While an original is always hard to find, he is easy to recognize.

Mason, John L.

13.

Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else's traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man's character is, the better it fits him.

Cicero

14.

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

15.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

16.

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

Voltaire

17.

Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work.

Marden, Orison Swett

18.

It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate -- to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.

Jefferson, Thomas

19.

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

20.

The happiness of every country depends upon the character of its people, rather than the form of its government.

Haliburton, Thomas C.

21.

If all I'm remembered for is being a good basketball player, then I've done a bad job with the rest of my life.

Thomas, Isiah

22.

I take it as a man's duty to restrain himself.

Lois McMaster Bujold

23.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

Shakespeare, William

24.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

We falsely attribute to men a determined character -- putting together all their yesterdays -- and averaging them -- we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support -- it is worse than a large family -- he is the silent poor indeed.

Thoreau, Henry David

26.

Pity the man who has a character to support --it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor indeed.

Thoreau, Henry David

27.

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

Reagan, Ronald

28.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

Lincoln, Abraham

29.

When about to commit a base deed, respect thyself, though there is no witness.

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

30.

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

31.

Character contributes to beauty. It fortifies a woman as her youth fades.

Bisset, Jacqueline

32.

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principles.

Hume, David

33.

Temperance is a tree which as for its root very little contentment, and for its fruit calm and peace.

Buddha

34.

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of a man you are. It shows me what your ideal of manhood is, and what kind of a man you long to be.

Carlyle, Thomas

35.

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.

Goldsmith, Oliver

36.

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

Disraeli, Benjamin

37.

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

James A. Froude

38.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

39.

Without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety, it is impossible for the character to be established.

Confucius

40.

It isn't the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog, that counts.

Howell, Harry

41.

Character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life - is the source from which self respect springs.

Joan Didion

42.

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

Hepburn, Katharine

43.

You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.

Lebowitz, Fran

44.

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

45.

One can easily judge the character of a person by the way they treat people who can do nothing for them.

Proverb

46.

The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.

Buren, Abigail Van

47.

A man with a so-called character is often a simple piece of mechanism; he has often only one point of view for the extremely complicated relationships of life.

Strindberg, J. August

48.

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

49.

I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.

Forster, Edward M.

50.

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.

Gaulle, Charles De