Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Lincoln, Abraham

Best Quotes about Character

The lord will not hold back the promises, even if the person who makes them is not worthy.

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

Frankfurter, Felix

Judge of your natural character by what you do in dreams.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.

Maurois, Andre

It is with trifles and when he is off guard that a man best reveals his character.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Baldwin, Faith

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

Freeman, Robert

10.

Character is a victory, not a gift.

11.

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

Thackeray, William M.

12.

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

13.

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

Petrarch, Francesco

14.

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

Joan Didion

15.

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

16.

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

Confucius

17.

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

James A. Froude

18.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

19.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

20.

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

21.

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.

Greeley, Horace

22.

Instill the love of you into all the world, for a good character is what is remembered.

Merikare

23.

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

Gardner, Ava

24.

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

Gill, Vince

25.

We don't love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.

Maritain, Jacques

26.

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

Leneru, Marie

27.

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

28.

The higher character a person supports the more they should regard their smallest actions.

29.

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

Seneca

30.

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

Nathaniel Emmons

31.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

Shakespeare, William

32.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Lippmann, Walter

39.

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

40.

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of a man you are. It shows me what your ideal of manhood is, and what kind of a man you long to be.

Carlyle, Thomas

41.

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

Brown, Les

42.

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

43.

I take it as a man's duty to restrain himself.

Lois McMaster Bujold

44.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

45.

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

Mohammed

46.

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

47.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

49.

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

50.

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