Motivational Quotes

Character

Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgment will always be in demand under all conditions.

- Babson, Roger

Best Quotes about Character

As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

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

Estrange, L.

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

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

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

Character is to man what carbon is to steel.

Hill, Napoleon

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

Guideposts

Character development is the aim of education.

O'Shea

10.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

11.

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

Aristotle

12.

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

13.

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.

Goldsmith, Oliver

14.

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

15.

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

Horace

16.

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

17.

A man's character is his fate.

Heraclitus

18.

Few persons are made of such strong fiber that they will make a costly outlay when surface work will pass as well in the market.

Bounds, E. M.

19.

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

20.

One can easily judge the character of a person by the way they treat people who can do nothing for them.

Proverb

21.

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

Ausonius, Decimus Magnus

22.

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

23.

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

Royal, Darrell

24.

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

James A. Froude

25.

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

26.

Character is a victory, not a gift.

27.

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

28.

The highest qualities of character must be earned.

Abbott, Lyman

29.

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

Seneca

30.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

31.

I would rather be adorned by beauty of character than jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, while character comes from within.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

32.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

33.

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

Freeman, Robert

34.

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

Collins, Marva

35.

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

36.

We falsely attribute to men a determined character -- putting together all their yesterdays -- and averaging them -- we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support -- it is worse than a large family -- he is the silent poor indeed.

Thoreau, Henry David

37.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

38.

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.

39.

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

Reagan, Ronald

40.

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

41.

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

Baldwin, Faith

42.

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

Maritain, Jacques

43.

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

Fitzwater, P. B.

44.

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

45.

Not to be cheered by praise, not to be grieved by blame, but to know thoroughly ones own virtues or powers are the characteristics of an excellent man.

Pandita, Saskya

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Plutarch

49.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

50.

If you stand straight, do not fear a crooked shadow.