Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Hermann Hesse

Best Quotes about Character

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

Gill, Vince

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

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

Lubbock, Sir John

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Howell, Harry

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

Nothing marks the character of a young man more than failure.

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

Guideposts

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

10.

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.

11.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

12.

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

13.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Plutarch

16.

Character is victory organized.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

You must look into people, as well as at them.

Chesterfield, Lord

18.

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

19.

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

Confucius

20.

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

Buddha

21.

Character is a victory, not a gift.

22.

It is with trifles and when he is off guard that a man best reveals his character.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

23.

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

24.

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

Angelou, Maya

25.

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

Collins, Marva

26.

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

Reynolds, Sir Joshua

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Character is the impulse reined down into steady continuance.

Parkhurst, Charles H.

30.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

32.

There is never a better measure of what a person is than what he does when he is absolutely free to choose.

Bulger, William M.

33.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

34.

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

35.

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.

36.

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

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.

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

Maritain, Jacques

39.

Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence.

Richter, Jean Paul

40.

Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.

Elmer G. Letterman

41.

Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming.

Rohn, Jim

42.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

43.

Character is the sum and total of a person's choices.

Fitzwater, P. B.

44.

Temperance is simply a disposition of the mind which binds the passion.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

45.

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