Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Character

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

Trotsky, Leon

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

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

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

Gardner, Ava

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

If a man character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.

Thackeray, William M.

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.

10.

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

Aristotle

11.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

12.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

13.

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

Oscar Levant

14.

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

15.

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

Reagan, Ronald

16.

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

Thurber, James

17.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

18.

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

19.

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

Maritain, Jacques

20.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

21.

Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it piece by piece-by thought, choice, courage and determination.

Luther, John

22.

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

Brown, Les

23.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

24.

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

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

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

27.

An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards, himself his own dungeon.

Pandita, Saskya

28.

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

Reynolds, Sir Joshua

29.

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

30.

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

Hay, Colin

31.

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

32.

Without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety, it is impossible for the character to be established.

Confucius

33.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

34.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

35.

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

Baldwin, Faith

36.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

37.

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

Joan Didion

38.

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

39.

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

Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon

40.

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

41.

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

Merikare

42.

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

Solon

43.

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.

44.

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