Motivational Quotes

Character

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

Best Quotes about Character

Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men and things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles.

Drummond, Henry

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

Collins, Marva

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

Gardner, Ava

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

Hepburn, Katharine

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

Hermann Hesse

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

Horace

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.

Landers, Ann

10.

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

Freeman, Robert

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

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.

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

16.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

17.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

Wooden, John

21.

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

22.

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

Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Seneca

27.

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

28.

He that has light within his own clear breast may sit in the center, and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts benighted walks under the mid-day sun;

Milton, John

29.

Pity the man who has a character to support --it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor indeed.

Thoreau, Henry David

30.

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of a man you are. It shows me what your ideal of manhood is, and what kind of a man you long to be.

Carlyle, Thomas

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Brown, Les

35.

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

36.

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

Maritain, Jacques

37.

How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.

Petrarch, Francesco

38.

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

Howell, Harry

39.

I would rather be adorned by beauty of character than jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, while character comes from within.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

40.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

41.

One stumble is enough to deface the character of an honorable life.

Estrange, L.

42.

The character of a man is known from his conversations.

Menander

43.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

Character matters; leadership descends from character.

Limbaugh, Rush

47.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

48.

Noble character is best appreciated in those ages in which it can most readily develop.