Motivational Quotes

Character

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

- Shakespeare, William

Best Quotes about Character

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

Hepburn, Katharine

Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgment will always be in demand under all conditions.

Babson, Roger

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

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

Francis Thompson

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

Estrange, L.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

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

Chesterfield, Lord

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

Greeley, Horace

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.

10.

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

Taylor, Bayard

11.

You can tell the character of every man when you see how he receives praise.

Seneca

12.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

13.

A rich man has no need of character.

Proverb, Hebrew

14.

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

Brown, Les

15.

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

16.

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

Trotsky, Leon

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you, and were helped by you, will remember you when forget-me-nots are withered. Carve your name on hearts, and not on marble

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

20.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

21.

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

22.

The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.

Reynolds, Sir Joshua

23.

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

24.

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

Aristotle

25.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

Washington, Booker T.

26.

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

Gill, Vince

27.

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

Richards, Mary Caroline

28.

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

Karr, Alphonse

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

32.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

Shakespeare, William

33.

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

Guideposts

34.

Character is the sum and total of a person's choices.

Fitzwater, P. B.

35.

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

Elihu Burritt

36.

One can easily judge the character of a person by the way they treat people who can do nothing for them.

Proverb

37.

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

38.

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

39.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

40.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

41.

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

42.

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

Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

Proverb

46.

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

47.

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