Motivational Quotes

Character

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

Best Quotes about Character

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

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

Oscar Levant

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

Leneru, Marie

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

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

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

Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

10.

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

11.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

12.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

13.

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

Thurber, James

14.

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

15.

One stumble is enough to deface the character of an honorable life.

Estrange, L.

16.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

17.

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

Chambers, Oswald

18.

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

Lippmann, Walter

19.

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

Marie Leneru

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.

Character is the sum and total of a person's choices.

Fitzwater, P. B.

22.

Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.

George Santayana

23.

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

Crisp, Quentin

24.

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

25.

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

Nathaniel Emmons

26.

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

Frankfurter, Felix

27.

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.

28.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity.

33.

A man's character is his fate.

Heraclitus

34.

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

35.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

36.

Clothes don't tell the character of the man, but they just as well talk for him as against him.

37.

Character is like the foundation of a house -- it is below the surface.

38.

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

Joan Didion

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

42.

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

Proverb

43.

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

Thackeray, William M.

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.

Character is the impulse reined down into steady continuance.

Parkhurst, Charles H.

46.

I have conquered an empire but I have not been able to conquer myself.

Peter The Great

47.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

48.

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

49.

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

Sivananda, Sri Swami

50.

Some people are born hammers, others anvils.

Proverb