Motivational Quotes

Character

Your character will be what you yourself choose to make it.

- Lubbock, Sir John

Best Quotes about Character

Some people are born hammers, others anvils.

Proverb

I take it as a man's duty to restrain himself.

Lois McMaster Bujold

The highest qualities of character must be earned.

Abbott, Lyman

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

I have conquered an empire but I have not been able to conquer myself.

Peter The Great

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

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

Elihu Burritt

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

Chambers, Oswald

10.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

11.

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

Seneca

12.

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

Baldwin, Faith

13.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

14.

Pity the man who has a character to support --it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor indeed.

Thoreau, Henry David

15.

Character matters; leadership descends from character.

Limbaugh, Rush

16.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

King Jr. Martin Luther

17.

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

Joan Didion

18.

Wherever man goes to dwell his character goes with him.

Proverb, African

19.

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

Aristotle

20.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

21.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

22.

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

Proverb

23.

A man with a so-called character is often a simple piece of mechanism; he has often only one point of view for the extremely complicated relationships of life.

Strindberg, J. August

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

Karr, Alphonse

30.

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

Oscar Levant

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Collins, Marva

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

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

Hay, Colin

38.

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

Angelou, Maya

39.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

40.

You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

41.

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

Taylor, Bayard

42.

The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.

Buren, Abigail Van

43.

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

44.

A man's character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow.

Beecher, Henry Ward

45.

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

Michener, James A.

46.

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

47.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Montale, Eugenio

48.

Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character

Covey, Stephen R.

49.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

50.

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

Hepburn, Katharine