Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Petrarch, Francesco

Best Quotes about Character

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

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

I would rather be adorned by beauty of character than jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, while character comes from within.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

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

James A. Froude

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.

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

Hall, Manly

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

10.

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

Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

The highest qualities of character must be earned.

Abbott, Lyman

14.

You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.

Lebowitz, Fran

15.

Integrity has no need of rules.

Camus, Albert

16.

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

Greeley, Horace

17.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

20.

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

21.

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

Solon

22.

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

Baldwin, Faith

23.

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

24.

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

Collins, Marva

25.

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

Nathaniel Emmons

26.

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

W. Somerset Maugham

27.

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.

28.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

30.

Nothing marks the character of a young man more than failure.

31.

Character is the impulse reined down into steady continuance.

Parkhurst, Charles H.

32.

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

Covey, Stephen R.

33.

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

Horace

34.

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.

35.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

36.

Character is another thing that is formed in youth and reformed in marriage.

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.

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

40.

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

Proverb

41.

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

42.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

43.

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you, and were helped by you, will remember you when forget-me-nots are withered. Carve your name on hearts, and not on marble

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

44.

Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgment will always be in demand under all conditions.

Babson, Roger

45.

I appreciate people who are civil, whether they mean it or not. I think: Be civil. Do not cherish your opinion over my feelings. There's a vanity to candor that isn't really worth it. Be kind.

Richard Greenberg

46.

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

47.

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

Taylor, Bayard

48.

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

49.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

50.

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

Haliburton, Thomas C.