Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Greeley, Horace

Best Quotes about Character

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

Petrarch, Francesco

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how -- the very best I can. And I mean to keep on doing it to the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me will not amount to anything. If the end brings me out all wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

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

Thoreau, Henry David

Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgment will always be in demand under all conditions.

Babson, Roger

Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.

Landers, Ann

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

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

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

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

10.

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

Nathaniel Emmons

11.

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

12.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

13.

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

Thurber, James

14.

Clear conscience never fears midnight knocking.

Proverb, Chinese

15.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

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

17.

Some people are born hammers, others anvils.

Proverb

18.

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

Horace

19.

One can acquire everything in solitude - except character.

Marie Henri Beyle

20.

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

Bisset, Jacqueline

21.

Success is always temporary. When all is said and one, the only thing you'll have left is your character.

Gill, Vince

22.

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

Hall, Manly

23.

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

Shakespeare, William

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.

Collins, Marva

27.

Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men and things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles.

Drummond, Henry

28.

My father told me that if you saw a man in a Rolls Royce you could be sure he was not a gentleman unless he was the chauffeur.

Arran, Earl of

29.

Wealth stays with us a little moment if at all: only our characters are steadfast, not our gold.

Euripides

30.

Football doesn't build character. It eliminates weak ones.

Royal, Darrell

31.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Churchill, Winston

32.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

33.

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

34.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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.

As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.

Cicero, Marcus T.

37.

Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.

Frankfurter, Felix

38.

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

Angelou, Maya

39.

The man who cannot believe in himself cannot believe in anything else. The basis of all integrity and character is whatever faith we have in our own integrity.

Smith, Roy L.

40.

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

41.

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another s.

Richter, Jean Paul

42.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

43.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Plutarch

44.

A man's character is his fate.

Heraclitus

45.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

46.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

47.

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

48.

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Abraham Lincoln

49.

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

Francis Thompson

50.

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

Taylor, Bayard