Motivational Quotes

Character

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

- Taylor, Bayard

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

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

Elihu Burritt

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Mohammed

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

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

Angelou, Maya

The lord will not hold back the promises, even if the person who makes them is not worthy.

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

Chambers, Oswald

10.

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principles.

Hume, David

11.

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

Shakespeare, William

12.

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

Estrange, L.

13.

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

Haliburton, Thomas C.

14.

Those who cross the sea change only the climate, not their character.

Horace

15.

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.

16.

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

17.

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

Richards, Mary Caroline

18.

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.

19.

There's a fine line between character building and soul destroying.

Hay, Colin

20.

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

21.

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

Joan Didion

22.

Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work.

Marden, Orison Swett

23.

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

Michener, James A.

24.

It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate -- to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.

Jefferson, Thomas

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Taylor, Bayard

28.

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

Francis Thompson

29.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

30.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

31.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

32.

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

Confucius

33.

Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.

George Santayana

34.

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

35.

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

Mason, John L.

36.

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

Chesterfield, Lord

37.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

38.

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

39.

Character contributes to beauty. It fortifies a woman as her youth fades.

Bisset, Jacqueline

40.

Let us not say, every man is the architect of his own fortune; but let us say, every man is the architect of his own character.

Boardman, George D.

41.

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

Voltaire

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Guideposts

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

Gardner, Ava

50.

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