Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Best Quotes about Character

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

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

Elihu Burritt

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

Character is victory organized.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

The character of a man is known from his conversations.

Menander

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

Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.

Elmer G. Letterman

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

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.

Greeley, Horace

10.

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

Richards, Mary Caroline

11.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

12.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

13.

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

14.

Few persons are made of such strong fiber that they will make a costly outlay when surface work will pass as well in the market.

Bounds, E. M.

15.

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

Proverb

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Estrange, L.

19.

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

Chambers, Oswald

20.

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

21.

Character is a victory, not a gift.

22.

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

Gardner, Ava

23.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

24.

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

25.

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

Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon

26.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

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

Joan Didion

30.

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

31.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

32.

A rich man has no need of character.

Proverb, Hebrew

33.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

34.

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

35.

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

Howell, Harry

36.

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

Disraeli, Benjamin

37.

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.

38.

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

Euripides

39.

If anyone tells you someone has changed their character; don't believe it.

Mohammed

40.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

41.

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

42.

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

Lippmann, Walter

43.

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

Thomas, John M.

44.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in dreams.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

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.

46.

I take it as a man's duty to restrain himself.

Lois McMaster Bujold

47.

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

48.

Wherever man goes to dwell his character goes with him.

Proverb, African

49.

To be fond of learning is near to wisdom; to practice with vigor is near to benevolence; and to be conscious of shame is near to fortitude. He who knows these three things

Confucius

50.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson