Motivational Quotes

Character

You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jelly beans.

- Reagan, Ronald

Best Quotes about Character

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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.

The character of a man is known from his conversations.

Menander

Testimony is like an arrow shot from a long bow and the force of it depends on the strength of the arm from which it was shot. Argument is like a bullet fired from a gun and has equal force even when issued from a child.

There is never a better measure of what a person is than what he does when he is absolutely free to choose.

Bulger, William M.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Temperance is simply a disposition of the mind which binds the passion.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

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

Greeley, Horace

10.

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

Leneru, Marie

11.

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

Peter The Great

12.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

13.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

14.

Character contributes to beauty. It fortifies a woman as her youth fades.

Bisset, Jacqueline

15.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

17.

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

18.

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

Solon

19.

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

Reynolds, Sir Joshua

20.

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

21.

Character is a victory, not a gift.

22.

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

Lippmann, Walter

23.

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.

24.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

25.

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

26.

Character is the impulse reined down into steady continuance.

Parkhurst, Charles H.

27.

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

Aristotle

28.

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

Freeman, Robert

29.

If all I'm remembered for is being a good basketball player, then I've done a bad job with the rest of my life.

Thomas, Isiah

30.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

35.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

Lincoln, Abraham

36.

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principles.

Hume, David

37.

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

38.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

39.

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

40.

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

Brown, Les

41.

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

42.

Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence.

Elihu Burritt

43.

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

44.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

48.

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

Richards, Mary Caroline

49.

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

50.

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