Motivational Quotes

Character

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

- Oscar Levant

Best Quotes about Character

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

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

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

Horace

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

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

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

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Churchill, Winston

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

Thurber, James

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

10.

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

11.

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

12.

The highest qualities of character must be earned.

Abbott, Lyman

13.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

14.

Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence.

Richter, Jean Paul

15.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids.

Aristotle

16.

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

Disraeli, Benjamin

17.

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

Lippmann, Walter

18.

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

Gill, Vince

19.

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

Maritain, Jacques

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

Let us not say, every man is the architect of his own fortune; but let us say, every man is the architect of his own character.

Boardman, George D.

25.

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

26.

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

Freeman, Robert

27.

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

Hall, Manly

28.

While an original is always hard to find, he is easy to recognize.

Mason, John L.

29.

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

Joan Didion

30.

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

31.

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

Nathaniel Emmons

32.

All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

33.

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

Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon

34.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

Washington, Booker T.

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

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

Brown, Les

38.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Plutarch

39.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

James, William

40.

It is with trifles and when he is off guard that a man best reveals his character.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

41.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

42.

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principles.

Hume, David

43.

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.

44.

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

46.

Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.

Collins, Marva

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Euripides

50.

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.

Goldsmith, Oliver