Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Lavater, Johann Kaspar

Best Quotes about Character

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

Frankfurter, Felix

To succeed is nothing -- it's an accident. But to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different: it is character.

Leneru, Marie

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.

Before you advise anyone Be yourself! reassess his character.

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

One can acquire everything in solitude - except character.

Marie Henri Beyle

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

King Jr. Martin Luther

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

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

Chesterfield, Lord

10.

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

Seneca

11.

A rich man has no need of character.

Proverb, Hebrew

12.

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

Mason, John L.

13.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Royal, Darrell

17.

Character development is the aim of education.

O'Shea

18.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

Shakespeare, William

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

22.

There is never a better measure of what a person is than what he does when he is absolutely free to choose.

Bulger, William M.

23.

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

24.

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

Joan Didion

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

I could never think well of a man's intellectual or moral character, if he was habitually unfaithful to his appointments.

Nathaniel Emmons

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

James A. Froude

32.

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

Proverb, Chinese

33.

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

Lippmann, Walter

34.

One can easily judge the character of a person by the way they treat people who can do nothing for them.

Proverb

35.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

36.

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

37.

Wherever man goes to dwell his character goes with him.

Proverb, African

38.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

39.

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

40.

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

Richards, Mary Caroline

41.

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

42.

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

43.

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

Shakespeare, William

44.

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

Thomas, John M.

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

48.

For character too is a process and an unfolding... among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?

Eliot, George

49.

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

Baldwin, Faith

50.

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