Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Elmer G. Letterman

Best Quotes about Character

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

Character is victory organized.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.

Maurois, Andre

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

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

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.

Greeley, Horace

10.

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

Crisp, Quentin

11.

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

Hermann Hesse

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Hall, Manly

15.

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

Petrarch, Francesco

16.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

17.

It is better for the development of character and contentment to do certain things badly for yourself than to have them done better for you by someone else.

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Abraham Lincoln

22.

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

Reagan, Ronald

23.

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

24.

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

25.

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

Mason, John L.

26.

If you stand straight, do not fear a crooked shadow.

Proverb, Chinese

27.

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

28.

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity.

29.

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.

30.

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

Merikare

31.

Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou

Akhenaton

32.

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.

33.

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

Angelou, Maya

34.

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.

35.

A man's character is his fate.

Heraclitus

36.

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

Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon

37.

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.

38.

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

Maritain, Jacques

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

42.

Wherever man goes to dwell his character goes with him.

Proverb, African

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Frankfurter, Felix

46.

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

47.

During my eighty-seven years, I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.

Baruch, Bernard M.

48.

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

Karr, Alphonse

49.

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

50.

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