Motivational Quotes

Character

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

Best Quotes about Character

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

Thoreau, Henry David

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.

Gaulle, Charles De

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another s.

Richter, Jean Paul

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

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

Elmer G. Letterman

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of a man you are. It shows me what your ideal of manhood is, and what kind of a man you long to be.

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Proverb

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Joan Didion

10.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

11.

Wherever man goes to dwell his character goes with him.

Proverb, African

12.

The character of a man is known from his conversations.

Menander

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

To succeed is nothing -- it's an accident. But to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different: it is character.

Leneru, Marie

18.

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

19.

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

Reagan, Ronald

20.

An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards, himself his own dungeon.

Pandita, Saskya

21.

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

Elihu Burritt

22.

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

Francis Thompson

23.

To succeed is nothing, it's an accident. but to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different: it is character.

Marie Leneru

24.

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

Lippmann, Walter

25.

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

Shakespeare, William

26.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

Haliburton, Thomas C.

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Hay, Colin

31.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

32.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

33.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

34.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

One can acquire everything in solitude - except character.

Marie Henri Beyle

36.

Character matters; leadership descends from character.

Limbaugh, Rush

37.

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

38.

A man's character is his fate.

Heraclitus

39.

Football doesn't build character. It eliminates weak ones.

Royal, Darrell

40.

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

Bisset, Jacqueline

41.

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

Maritain, Jacques

42.

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

43.

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

Howell, Harry

44.

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

45.

Noble character is best appreciated in those ages in which it can most readily develop.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

46.

They attack the one man with their hate and their shower of weapons. But he is like some rock which stretches into the vast sea and which, exposed to the fury of the winds and beaten against by the waves, endures all the violence

Virgil

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

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

Karr, Alphonse

50.

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

Thomas, John M.