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

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

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

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

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

Character is the impulse reined down into steady continuance.

Parkhurst, Charles H.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

W. Somerset Maugham

10.

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

11.

Character development is the aim of education.

O'Shea

12.

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

13.

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

Bisset, Jacqueline

14.

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

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.

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

17.

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.

18.

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.

19.

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

20.

It is better for the development of character and contentment to do certain things badly for yourself than to have them done better for you by someone else.

21.

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

22.

Character in a saint means the disposition of Jesus Christ persistently manifested.

Chambers, Oswald

23.

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

24.

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

Lippmann, Walter

25.

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

26.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

27.

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

Thurber, James

28.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

29.

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

30.

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

Brown, Les

31.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

32.

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

33.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

34.

Character is not made in a crisis -- it is only exhibited.

Freeman, Robert

35.

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

36.

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

Seneca

37.

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

38.

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

39.

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

Bible

40.

Good character is like a rubber ball -- thrown down hard -- it bounces right back. Good reputation is like a crystal ball -- thrown for gain -- shattered and cracked.

Linall Jr. A. L.

41.

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

Solon

42.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

43.

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

44.

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.

Gaulle, Charles De

45.

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

46.

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

47.

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

48.

The character of a man is known from his conversations.

Menander

49.

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

50.

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.