Motivational Quotes

Character

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

Best Quotes about Character

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

Talents are best nurtured in solitude. Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.

Keller, Helen

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

Nathaniel Emmons

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principles.

Hume, David

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

The highest qualities of character must be earned.

Abbott, Lyman

10.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

11.

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

Peter The Great

12.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

13.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

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.

15.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

16.

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

17.

Before you advise anyone Be yourself! reassess his character.

18.

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.

Gaulle, Charles De

19.

You can tell the character of every man when you see how he receives praise.

Seneca

20.

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

Sivananda, Sri Swami

21.

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

22.

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

Thurber, James

23.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

24.

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

Gill, Vince

25.

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

26.

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

Maritain, Jacques

27.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

28.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

Washington, Booker T.

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

One can acquire everything in solitude - except character.

Marie Henri Beyle

32.

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

Fitzwater, P. B.

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.

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

35.

Some people are born hammers, others anvils.

Proverb

36.

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

37.

That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

If anyone tells you someone has changed their character; don't believe it.

Mohammed

39.

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

Chesterfield, Lord

40.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

41.

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

42.

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

43.

The higher character a person supports the more they should regard their smallest actions.

44.

It isn't the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog, that counts.

Howell, Harry

45.

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

Frankfurter, Felix

46.

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

Voltaire

47.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

48.

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

49.

There's a fine line between character building and soul destroying.

Hay, Colin

50.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von