Motivational Quotes

Character

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

- Hill, Napoleon

Best Quotes about Character

Character is not made in a crisis -- it is only exhibited.

Freeman, Robert

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

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

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

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

Guideposts

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

Leneru, Marie

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

Francis Thompson

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

10.

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

Joan Didion

11.

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principles.

Hume, David

12.

Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it piece by piece-by thought, choice, courage and determination.

Luther, John

13.

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

14.

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

Maritain, Jacques

15.

An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards, himself his own dungeon.

Pandita, Saskya

16.

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

17.

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

Hall, Manly

18.

Character is made by many acts; it may be lost by a single one.

19.

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

20.

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

Hermann Hesse

21.

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

22.

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

Euripides

23.

The lord will not hold back the promises, even if the person who makes them is not worthy.

24.

Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character

Covey, Stephen R.

25.

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

Fitzwater, P. B.

26.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

27.

The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this nation was built are: initiative, imagination, individuality, and independence.

Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon

28.

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

Shakespeare, William

29.

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

Taylor, Bayard

30.

One can acquire everything in solitude - except character.

Marie Henri Beyle

31.

Some people are born hammers, others anvils.

Proverb

32.

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

Brown, Les

33.

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

34.

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

Gardner, Ava

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.

If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.

Maurois, Andre

37.

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.

38.

It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

39.

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

Royal, Darrell

40.

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

41.

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

Horace

42.

Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence.

Elihu Burritt

43.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

Oscar Levant

45.

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

46.

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

Haliburton, Thomas C.

47.

Wherever man goes to dwell his character goes with him.

Proverb, African

48.

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

Solon

49.

Character is a victory, not a gift.

50.

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