Motivational Quotes

Character

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

Best Quotes about Character

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

Leneru, Marie

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

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

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

Taylor, Bayard

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

Thomas, John M.

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

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

Clear conscience never fears midnight knocking.

Proverb, Chinese

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.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

11.

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

12.

Character is the impulse reined down into steady continuance.

Parkhurst, Charles H.

13.

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.

Michener, James A.

14.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

15.

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

Frankfurter, Felix

16.

If a man character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.

Thackeray, William M.

17.

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

18.

I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.

James, William

19.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

20.

Character development is the aim of education.

O'Shea

21.

I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.

Forster, Edward M.

22.

If anyone tells you someone has changed their character; don't believe it.

Mohammed

23.

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

Hermann Hesse

24.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

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

James A. Froude

27.

Character is a victory, not a gift.

28.

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

29.

Strong feelings do not necessarily make a strong character. The strength of a man is to be measured by the power of the feelings he subdues not by the power of those which subdue him.

William Carleton

30.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

31.

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

32.

I have conquered an empire but I have not been able to conquer myself.

Peter The Great

33.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

34.

When about to commit a base deed, respect thyself, though there is no witness.

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

Washington, Booker T.

38.

If an ass goes traveling it will not come home a horse.

Proverb

39.

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

Horace

40.

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