Motivational Quotes

Character

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.

Best Quotes about Character

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

You can buy a person's time; you can buy their physical presence at a given place; you can even buy a measured number of their skilled muscular motions per hour. But you can not buy enthusiasm... you can not buy loyalty. You can not buy the devotion of hearts, minds, or souls. You must earn these.

Francis, Clarence

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

Greeley, Horace

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

Chambers, Oswald

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. [Proverbs 23:7]

Bible

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

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

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

Voltaire

10.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

11.

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

12.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

13.

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.

14.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

Integrity has no need of rules.

Camus, Albert

16.

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

Lippmann, Walter

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

A man with a so-called character is often a simple piece of mechanism; he has often only one point of view for the extremely complicated relationships of life.

Strindberg, J. August

20.

There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

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

22.

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

23.

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

Reynolds, Sir Joshua

24.

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

Nathaniel Emmons

25.

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

26.

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

Thurber, James

27.

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

Taylor, Bayard

28.

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

29.

Character is a victory, not a gift.

30.

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

Chesterfield, Lord

31.

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

Thomas, John M.

32.

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.

33.

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

Guideposts

34.

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

Petrarch, Francesco

35.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in dreams.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

37.

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

Gill, Vince

38.

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

39.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

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

41.

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

Leneru, Marie

42.

To have character is to be big enough to take life on.

Richards, Mary Caroline

43.

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

Thackeray, William M.

44.

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