Motivational Quotes

Character

Strong feelings do not necessarily make a strong character. The strength of a man is to be measured by the power of the feelings he subdues not by the power of those which subdue him.

- William Carleton

Best Quotes about Character

Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.

Collins, Marva

Character is simply habit long continued.

Plutarch

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

Shakespeare, William

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

Sivananda, Sri Swami

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

Shakespeare, William

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

Seneca

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

Marden, Orison Swett

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

Hall, Manly

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.

10.

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

Lippmann, Walter

11.

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

12.

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

Karr, Alphonse

13.

A man's character is his fate.

Heraclitus

14.

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

15.

Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence.

Richter, Jean Paul

16.

During my eighty-seven years, I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.

Baruch, Bernard M.

17.

A rich man has no need of character.

Proverb, Hebrew

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

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

20.

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

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.

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

Fitzwater, P. B.

23.

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

24.

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

25.

You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jelly beans.

Reagan, Ronald

26.

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

Angelou, Maya

27.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

28.

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

29.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

30.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

31.

All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

32.

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

Solon

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principles.

Hume, David

40.

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

Howell, Harry

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness.

Baldwin, Faith

46.

Integrity has no need of rules.

Camus, Albert

47.

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

Freeman, Robert

48.

Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou

Akhenaton

49.

The superior man will watch over himself when he is alone. He examines his heart that there may be nothing wrong there, and that he may have no cause of dissatisfaction with himself.

Confucius

50.

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

Jefferson, Thomas