Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Maritain, Jacques

Best Quotes about Character

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

Hermann Hesse

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

Thoreau, Henry David

Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.

Collins, Marva

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

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.

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

The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this nation was built are: initiative, imagination, individuality, and independence.

Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon

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

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

10.

Character matters; leadership descends from character.

Limbaugh, Rush

11.

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

Bible

12.

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

13.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

14.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

James, William

15.

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

16.

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principles.

Hume, David

17.

The character of a man is known from his conversations.

Menander

18.

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

19.

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

Proverb, Chinese

20.

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

Karr, Alphonse

21.

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

22.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

23.

When God measures man, He puts the tape around his heart -- not his head.

Guideposts

24.

Character is another thing that is formed in youth and reformed in marriage.

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids.

Aristotle

27.

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

Oscar Levant

28.

You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

29.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

30.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

31.

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.

32.

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

Covey, Stephen R.

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

Surmounting difficulty is the crucible that forms character.

Robbins, Anthony

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

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

Maritain, Jacques

39.

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

40.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

41.

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

42.

Temperance is simply a disposition of the mind which binds the passion.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

43.

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

Elihu Burritt

44.

Before you advise anyone Be yourself! reassess his character.

45.

While an original is always hard to find, he is easy to recognize.

Mason, John L.

46.

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

Buddha

47.

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

48.

Character is a victory, not a gift.

49.

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

50.

The man who cannot believe in himself cannot believe in anything else. The basis of all integrity and character is whatever faith we have in our own integrity.

Smith, Roy L.