Motivational Quotes

Character

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Best Quotes about Character

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

Reagan, Ronald

How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.

Petrarch, Francesco

Wherever man goes to dwell his character goes with him.

Proverb, African

Integrity has no need of rules.

Camus, Albert

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

Wooden, John

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

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

Marden, Orison Swett

The higher character a person supports the more they should regard their smallest actions.

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

Crisp, Quentin

10.

Some people are born hammers, others anvils.

Proverb

11.

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

W. Somerset Maugham

12.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

James, William

13.

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

Proverb

14.

The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.

Reynolds, Sir Joshua

15.

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.

Greeley, Horace

16.

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

17.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

18.

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

19.

You can tell the character of every man when you see how he receives praise.

Seneca

20.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

21.

While he was not as dumb as an ox, he was not any smarter either.

Thurber, James

22.

The character of a man is known from his conversations.

Menander

23.

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

Guideposts

24.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

25.

The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

26.

Clothes don't tell the character of the man, but they just as well talk for him as against him.

27.

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

Covey, Stephen R.

28.

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

Hermann Hesse

29.

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

30.

In attempts to improve your character, know what is in your power and what is beyond it.

Francis Thompson

31.

Look, we're all the same; a man is a fourteen-room house --in the bedroom he's asleep with his intelligent wife, in the living-room he's rolling around with some bareass girl, in the library he's paying his taxes, in the yard he's raising tomatoes, and in the cellar he's making a bomb to blow it all up.

Miller, Arthur

32.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

33.

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

Hall, Manly

34.

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

Marie Leneru

35.

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

Howell, Harry

36.

Talents are best nurtured in solitude. Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

37.

A man's character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow.

Beecher, Henry Ward

38.

Let us not say, every man is the architect of his own fortune; but let us say, every man is the architect of his own character.

Boardman, George D.

39.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

40.

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

41.

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

Trotsky, Leon

42.

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

Brown, Les

43.

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

44.

Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath.

Solon

45.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

Washington, Booker T.

46.

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

47.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

48.

We don't love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.

Maritain, Jacques

49.

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

50.

Not to be cheered by praise, not to be grieved by blame, but to know thoroughly ones own virtues or powers are the characteristics of an excellent man.

Pandita, Saskya