Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Nathaniel Emmons

Best Quotes about Character

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

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

Maritain, Jacques

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

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

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

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

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

Proverb, Chinese

10.

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

Karr, Alphonse

11.

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

Confucius

12.

Some people are born hammers, others anvils.

Proverb

13.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

Hall, Manly

14.

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

Thomas, John M.

15.

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

Nathaniel Emmons

16.

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

Frankfurter, Felix

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Character is a victory, not a gift.

20.

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

Howell, Harry

21.

Integrity has no need of rules.

Camus, Albert

22.

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

Taylor, Bayard

23.

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

Gardner, Ava

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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.

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

Peter The Great

31.

Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming.

Rohn, Jim

32.

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

33.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

34.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

35.

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

36.

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

Voltaire

37.

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

Petrarch, Francesco

38.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

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

40.

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

Bible

41.

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.

42.

Character matters; leadership descends from character.

Limbaugh, Rush

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

46.

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

Francis Thompson

47.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

48.

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

49.

Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath.

Solon

50.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

Shakespeare, William