Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Hermann Hesse

Best Quotes about Character

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

Maritain, Jacques

When God measures man, He puts the tape around his heart -- not his head.

Guideposts

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

Solon

Clear conscience never fears midnight knocking.

Proverb, Chinese

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Thackeray, William M.

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

Angelou, Maya

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

Chesterfield, Lord

A rich man has no need of character.

Proverb, Hebrew

10.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

11.

Some people are born hammers, others anvils.

Proverb

12.

Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work.

Marden, Orison Swett

13.

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

James A. Froude

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Bible

17.

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

Confucius

18.

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

19.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

20.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

21.

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

Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon

22.

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

23.

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

24.

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

Oscar Levant

25.

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

Reynolds, Sir Joshua

26.

In attempts to improve your character, know what is in your power and what is beyond it.

Francis Thompson

27.

Clothes don't tell the character of the man, but they just as well talk for him as against him.

28.

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

Mason, John L.

29.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

Shakespeare, William

30.

The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

31.

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.

32.

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

33.

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

Hall, Manly

34.

It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate -- to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

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

Merikare

36.

The superior man will watch over himself when he is alone. He examines his heart that there may be nothing wrong there, and that he may have no cause of dissatisfaction with himself.

Confucius

37.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

38.

You must regulate your life by the standards you admire when you are at your best.

Thomas, John M.

39.

Character development is the aim of education.

O'Shea

40.

Character is a by-product; it is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

41.

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

42.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

43.

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

44.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

45.

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

Greeley, Horace

46.

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

47.

As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.

Cicero, Marcus T.

48.

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

Karr, Alphonse

49.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

Shakespeare, William

50.

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