Motivational Quotes

Character

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

Best Quotes about 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

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

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.

As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Fame is what you have taken, character is what you give. When to this truth you awaken, then you begin to live.

Taylor, Bayard

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

Bisset, Jacqueline

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

10.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.

Keller, Helen

11.

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

Proverb

12.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

13.

You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jelly beans.

Reagan, Ronald

14.

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

15.

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

Voltaire

16.

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

17.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

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

Freeman, Robert

19.

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

Michener, James A.

20.

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

Thurber, James

21.

Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou

Akhenaton

22.

In attempts to improve your character, know what is in your power and what is beyond it.

Francis Thompson

23.

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

Lippmann, Walter

24.

Wealth stays with us a little moment if at all: only our characters are steadfast, not our gold.

Euripides

25.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

26.

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.

27.

Temperance is a tree which as for its root very little contentment, and for its fruit calm and peace.

Buddha

28.

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

29.

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

Marie Leneru

30.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

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.

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

33.

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

Thomas, John M.

34.

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

35.

Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.

Landers, Ann

36.

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

37.

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

Chesterfield, Lord

38.

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

Hepburn, Katharine

39.

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

Estrange, L.

40.

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

Gill, Vince

41.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Plutarch

42.

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

43.

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Abraham Lincoln

44.

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.

45.

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

Maritain, Jacques

46.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

47.

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

48.

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

Richards, Mary Caroline

49.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

50.

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