Motivational Quotes

Character

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

Best Quotes about Character

Character is another thing that is formed in youth and reformed in marriage.

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.

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

Guideposts

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

Hall, Manly

Instill the love of you into all the world, for a good character is what is remembered.

Merikare

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

While he was not as dumb as an ox, he was not any smarter either.

Thurber, James

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity.

Character development is the aim of education.

O'Shea

10.

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

11.

Testimony is like an arrow shot from a long bow and the force of it depends on the strength of the arm from which it was shot. Argument is like a bullet fired from a gun and has equal force even when issued from a child.

12.

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

James A. Froude

13.

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

14.

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

Crisp, Quentin

15.

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

16.

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

Leneru, Marie

17.

The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

18.

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

Gill, Vince

19.

There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.

Disraeli, Benjamin

20.

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

Covey, Stephen R.

21.

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

Voltaire

22.

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

23.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

24.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

28.

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

29.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

30.

Some people are born hammers, others anvils.

Proverb

31.

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

32.

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

Greeley, Horace

33.

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

Elmer G. Letterman

34.

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

35.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Plutarch

36.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

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

38.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

39.

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

Gardner, Ava

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principles.

Hume, David

43.

If a man character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.

Thackeray, William M.

44.

Character is our destiny.

Heraclitus

45.

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

46.

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

Euripides

47.

Character is the impulse reined down into steady continuance.

Parkhurst, Charles H.

48.

Clear conscience never fears midnight knocking.

Proverb, Chinese

49.

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

Maritain, Jacques

50.

Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming.

Rohn, Jim