Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Merikare

Best Quotes about Character

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

Petrarch, Francesco

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

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

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

Thoreau, Henry David

You can buy a person's time; you can buy their physical presence at a given place; you can even buy a measured number of their skilled muscular motions per hour. But you can not buy enthusiasm... you can not buy loyalty. You can not buy the devotion of hearts, minds, or souls. You must earn these.

Francis, Clarence

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

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

It isn't the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog, that counts.

Howell, Harry

10.

The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

11.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

12.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

13.

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

Thomas, John M.

14.

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.

15.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

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

Freeman, Robert

17.

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

Elihu Burritt

18.

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

Proverb

19.

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

Brown, Les

20.

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

Mason, John L.

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.

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

23.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

24.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

25.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

The character of a man is known from his conversations.

Menander

27.

The happiness of every country depends upon the character of its people, rather than the form of its government.

Haliburton, Thomas C.

28.

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

29.

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

30.

Some people are born hammers, others anvils.

Proverb

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

34.

Character is made by many acts; it may be lost by a single one.

35.

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.

36.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

37.

There is never a better measure of what a person is than what he does when he is absolutely free to choose.

Bulger, William M.

38.

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

Nathaniel Emmons

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Hermann Hesse

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Maritain, Jacques

45.

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

Lippmann, Walter

46.

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

Michener, James A.

47.

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

48.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

49.

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

50.

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