Motivational Quotes

Character

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

Best Quotes about Character

Character is a victory, not a gift.

If anyone tells you someone has changed their character; don't believe it.

Mohammed

Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character

Covey, Stephen R.

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

Proverb

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

Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence.

Richter, Jean Paul

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Chambers, Oswald

12.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

13.

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

14.

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

Crisp, Quentin

15.

He that has light within his own clear breast may sit in the center, and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts benighted walks under the mid-day sun;

Milton, John

16.

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

17.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

18.

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

Chesterfield, Lord

19.

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

Confucius

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

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

23.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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.

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

Elihu Burritt

26.

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

Petrarch, Francesco

27.

Everyone has three characters, that which they exhibit, that which they have, and that which they think they have.

Karr, Alphonse

28.

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

29.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

30.

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

Royal, Darrell

31.

I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.

James, William

32.

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

Thackeray, William M.

33.

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

34.

Let us not say, every man is the architect of his own fortune; but let us say, every man is the architect of his own character.

Boardman, George D.

35.

Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.

Elmer G. Letterman

36.

What you possess in the world will be found at the day of your death to belong to someone else. But what you are will be yours forever.

Dyke, Henry Van

37.

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

Michener, James A.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Success is always temporary. When all is said and one, the only thing you'll have left is your character.

Gill, Vince

42.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

43.

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

44.

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

45.

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you, and were helped by you, will remember you when forget-me-nots are withered. Carve your name on hearts, and not on marble

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

46.

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

Voltaire

47.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

Wooden, John

48.

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

Freeman, Robert

49.

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

50.

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

Proverb, Chinese