Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- James A. Froude

Best Quotes about Character

He that has light within his own clear breast may sit in the center, and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts benighted walks under the mid-day sun;

Milton, John

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

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

Francis Thompson

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

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

Reagan, Ronald

Character in a saint means the disposition of Jesus Christ persistently manifested.

Chambers, Oswald

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

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

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

Gardner, Ava

10.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

11.

You must regulate your life by the standards you admire when you are at your best.

Thomas, John M.

12.

Honor is the inner garment of the Soul; the first thing put on by it with the flesh, and the last it layeth down at its separation from it.

Akhenaton

13.

Integrity has no need of rules.

Camus, Albert

14.

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

15.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

16.

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

Chesterfield, Lord

17.

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

18.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

19.

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

Elihu Burritt

20.

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

Maritain, Jacques

21.

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

22.

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

Hermann Hesse

23.

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

24.

Good character is like a rubber ball -- thrown down hard -- it bounces right back. Good reputation is like a crystal ball -- thrown for gain -- shattered and cracked.

Linall Jr. A. L.

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

Character matters; leadership descends from character.

Limbaugh, Rush

27.

Character is a by-product; it is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

28.

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

Buddha

29.

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

30.

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

Crisp, Quentin

31.

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

32.

The highest qualities of character must be earned.

Abbott, Lyman

33.

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

Greeley, Horace

34.

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

35.

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

Fitzwater, P. B.

36.

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

Oscar Levant

37.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

38.

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

Leneru, Marie

39.

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

Royal, Darrell

40.

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

41.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

James, William

42.

Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.

Lippmann, Walter

43.

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

44.

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

Horace

45.

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

46.

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

Solon

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Character is victory organized.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

50.

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

James A. Froude