Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Thurber, James

Best Quotes about Character

Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.

Elmer G. Letterman

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

Lippmann, Walter

Instill the love of you into all the world, for a good character is what is remembered.

Merikare

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

Voltaire

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

Collins, Marva

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Mason, John L.

Clear conscience never fears midnight knocking.

Proverb, Chinese

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

Seneca

10.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

11.

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

12.

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

Chesterfield, Lord

13.

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

Horace

14.

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

Reynolds, Sir Joshua

15.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Character matters; leadership descends from character.

Limbaugh, Rush

20.

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.

21.

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.

22.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

23.

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

24.

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

Peter The Great

25.

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

Frankfurter, Felix

26.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

27.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

28.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

A man with a so-called character is often a simple piece of mechanism; he has often only one point of view for the extremely complicated relationships of life.

Strindberg, J. August

35.

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

36.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Plutarch

37.

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

38.

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

39.

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

Hall, Manly

40.

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

Nathaniel Emmons

41.

Everyone has three characters, that which they exhibit, that which they have, and that which they think they have.

Karr, Alphonse

42.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

43.

Wherever man goes to dwell his character goes with him.

Proverb, African

44.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

45.

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

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

One can acquire everything in solitude - except character.

Marie Henri Beyle

50.

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.