Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Joan Didion

Best Quotes about Character

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

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Francis Thompson

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

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

Mason, John L.

Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.

Lippmann, Walter

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

Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared; but only men of character are trusted.

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

10.

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

11.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

12.

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

13.

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

Fitzwater, P. B.

14.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

15.

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

Oscar Levant

16.

If an ass goes traveling it will not come home a horse.

Proverb

17.

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

18.

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

Seneca

19.

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

20.

I appreciate people who are civil, whether they mean it or not. I think: Be civil. Do not cherish your opinion over my feelings. There's a vanity to candor that isn't really worth it. Be kind.

Richard Greenberg

21.

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

Thurber, James

22.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

23.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

24.

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

Elihu Burritt

25.

Clear conscience never fears midnight knocking.

Proverb, Chinese

26.

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.

27.

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

Petrarch, Francesco

28.

You can buy a person's time; you can buy their physical presence at a given place; you can even buy a measured number of their skilled muscular motions per hour. But you can not buy enthusiasm... you can not buy loyalty. You can not buy the devotion of hearts, minds, or souls. You must earn these.

Francis, Clarence

29.

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

Michener, James A.

30.

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

31.

Fame is what you have taken, character is what you give. When to this truth you awaken, then you begin to live.

Taylor, Bayard

32.

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

33.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

34.

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

Hay, Colin

35.

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

Maritain, Jacques

36.

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principles.

Hume, David

37.

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

Horace

38.

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

Thackeray, William M.

39.

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

40.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

41.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

42.

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.

43.

Football doesn't build character. It eliminates weak ones.

Royal, Darrell

44.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

Washington, Booker T.

45.

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

46.

Character matters; leadership descends from character.

Limbaugh, Rush