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

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

To have character is to be big enough to take life on.

Richards, Mary Caroline

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

There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Confucius

Character is the impulse reined down into steady continuance.

Parkhurst, Charles H.

My father told me that if you saw a man in a Rolls Royce you could be sure he was not a gentleman unless he was the chauffeur.

Arran, Earl of

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

Lincoln, Abraham

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Churchill, Winston

10.

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

11.

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

Guideposts

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

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

17.

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

Marden, Orison Swett

18.

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

19.

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.

20.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

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

Horace

23.

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

Lippmann, Walter

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.

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

26.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

27.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

28.

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

Estrange, L.

29.

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

30.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

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.

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

33.

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

34.

Character development is the aim of education.

O'Shea

35.

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

36.

Honor is the inner garment of the Soul; the first thing put on by it with the flesh, and the last it layeth down at its separation from it.

Akhenaton

37.

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

Haliburton, Thomas C.

38.

Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming.

Rohn, Jim

39.

Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness.

Baldwin, Faith

40.

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

Hermann Hesse

41.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

42.

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

Petrarch, Francesco

43.

Integrity has no need of rules.

Camus, Albert

44.

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

James A. Froude

45.

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.

46.

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

Voltaire

47.

Character is made by many acts; it may be lost by a single one.

48.

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

Bible

49.

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

Royal, Darrell

50.

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