Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Lois McMaster Bujold

Best Quotes about Character

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

Frankfurter, Felix

Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared; but only men of character are trusted.

Character is like the foundation of a house -- it is below the surface.

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

Voltaire

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Thurber, James

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

James A. Froude

A man's character is his fate.

Heraclitus

10.

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

11.

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

Solon

12.

The highest qualities of character must be earned.

Abbott, Lyman

13.

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

Oscar Levant

14.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

15.

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

Trotsky, Leon

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Confucius

19.

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

Freeman, Robert

20.

The man who cannot believe in himself cannot believe in anything else. The basis of all integrity and character is whatever faith we have in our own integrity.

Smith, Roy L.

21.

Few persons are made of such strong fiber that they will make a costly outlay when surface work will pass as well in the market.

Bounds, E. M.

22.

It is better for the development of character and contentment to do certain things badly for yourself than to have them done better for you by someone else.

23.

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

Crisp, Quentin

24.

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

Maritain, Jacques

25.

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

Gill, Vince

26.

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

Haliburton, Thomas C.

27.

Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.

Lowell, James Russell

28.

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

Hall, Manly

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

During my eighty-seven years, I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.

Baruch, Bernard M.

32.

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

Fitzwater, P. B.

33.

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

34.

Before you advise anyone Be yourself! reassess his character.

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

39.

Some people are born hammers, others anvils.

Proverb

40.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

41.

Clear conscience never fears midnight knocking.

Proverb, Chinese

42.

One can easily judge the character of a person by the way they treat people who can do nothing for them.

Proverb

43.

Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness.

Baldwin, Faith

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

48.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

49.

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

Hermann Hesse

50.

Not to be cheered by praise, not to be grieved by blame, but to know thoroughly ones own virtues or powers are the characteristics of an excellent man.

Pandita, Saskya