Motivational Quotes

Character

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.

- Keller, Helen

Best Quotes about Character

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

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.

Goldsmith, Oliver

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

Gardner, Ava

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

James, William

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

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

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

Joan Didion

Surmounting difficulty is the crucible that forms character.

Robbins, Anthony

10.

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

Royal, Darrell

11.

Some people are born hammers, others anvils.

Proverb

12.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

13.

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

Brown, Les

14.

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

15.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

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

Voltaire

17.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

18.

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

Petrarch, Francesco

19.

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

20.

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

Crisp, Quentin

21.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

22.

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

Hall, Manly

23.

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

Oscar Levant

24.

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

25.

One can acquire everything in solitude - except character.

Marie Henri Beyle

26.

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

27.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

Shakespeare, William

28.

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

Proverb, Chinese

29.

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

30.

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

31.

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.

32.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

33.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

34.

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

Collins, Marva

35.

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

36.

Integrity has no need of rules.

Camus, Albert

37.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

38.

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

Baldwin, Faith

39.

Character contributes to beauty. It fortifies a woman as her youth fades.

Bisset, Jacqueline

40.

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

41.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Plutarch

42.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

James, William

43.

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

44.

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

Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon

45.

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

Seneca

46.

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

47.

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

Proverb

48.

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

Frankfurter, Felix

49.

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

50.

We falsely attribute to men a determined character -- putting together all their yesterdays -- and averaging them -- we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support -- it is worse than a large family -- he is the silent poor indeed.

Thoreau, Henry David