Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Aristotle

Best Quotes about Character

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

Shakespeare, William

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

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

Horace

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

Merikare

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

Chesterfield, Lord

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. [Proverbs 23:7]

Bible

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

10.

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

Freeman, Robert

11.

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

Mason, John L.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Haliburton, Thomas C.

16.

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

Leneru, Marie

17.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

18.

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

19.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

20.

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

Fitzwater, P. B.

21.

The lord will not hold back the promises, even if the person who makes them is not worthy.

22.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

23.

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

Aristotle

24.

Good character is like a rubber ball -- thrown down hard -- it bounces right back. Good reputation is like a crystal ball -- thrown for gain -- shattered and cracked.

Linall Jr. A. L.

25.

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

26.

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

Nathaniel Emmons

27.

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another s.

Richter, Jean Paul

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Voltaire

31.

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

32.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

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

34.

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

35.

The highest qualities of character must be earned.

Abbott, Lyman

36.

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

Elihu Burritt

37.

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

38.

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

Thackeray, William M.

39.

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.

Michener, James A.

40.

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

Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon

41.

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

Thurber, James

42.

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

43.

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

Karr, Alphonse

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.