Character Quotes

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

~ Goethe

Style personality - deliberately adopted and therefore a mask - is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.

~ William Butler Yeats

Show me a good and gracious loser and I'll show you a failure.

~ Knute Rockne

Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

~ Mark Twain

I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.

~ Tallulah Bankhead

Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself anything goes.

~ Ayn Rand

To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

~ Aristotle

Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Character is perfectly educated will.

~ Novalis

Character is long-standing habit.

~ Plutarch

I was born modest not all over but in spots.

~ Mark Twain

Moderation is an ostentatious proof of our strength of character.

~ La Rochefoucauld

If you think about what you ought to do for other people your character will take care of itself.

~ Woodrow Wilson

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

~ James A. Froude

A modest man is usually admired - if people ever hear of him.

~ Edgar Watson Howe

The clock struck eleven with the respectful unobtrusiveness of one whose mission in life is to be ignored.

~ Saki

Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.

~ Adlai Stevenson

My specialty is detached malevolence.

~ Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Every one is as God made him and oftentimes a good deal worse.

~ Cervantes

Character is that which can do without success.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Character is what God and the angels know of us reputation is what men and women think of us.

~ Horace Mann

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

~ Stendhal

Every man has three characters - that which he exhibits that which he has and that which he thinks he has.

~ Alphonse Kan

If I take care of my character my reputation will take care of itself.

~ D. L. Moody

A wise and an understanding heart.

~ Bible

Everyone ought to bear patiently the results of his own conduct.

~ Phaedrus

Every man has his follies - and often they are the most interesting things he has got.

~ Josh Billings

Indecision is like a stepchild: if he doesn't wash his hands he is called dirty if he does he is wasting the water.

~ African Proverb

Tis e'er the wont of simple folk to prize the deed and overlook the motive and of learned folk to discount the deed and lay open the soul of the doer.

~ John Barth

Learn to say 'No' it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.

~ Anonymous

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it the tree is the real thing.

~ Anonymous

Every man in the world is better than some one else. And not as good as some one else.

~ William Saroyan

In Victorian times the purpose of life was to develop a personality once and for all and then stand on it.

~ Ashley Montagu

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

~ Albert Camus

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

~ Alexander Pope

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

~ Albert Einstein

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.

~ Elbert Hubbard

One's appearance bespeaks dignity corresponding to the depth of his character. One's concentrated effort, serene attitude, taciturn air, courteous disposition, thoroughly polite bearing, gritted teeth with a piercing look - each of these reveals dignity. Such outward appearance, in short, comes from constant attentiveness and seriousness.

~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo

A minister of Jesus Christ should not be regardless of his attitude. If he is the representative of Jesus Christ, his deportment, his attitude, his gestures, should be of that character which will not strike the beholder with disgust.

~ Ellen G. White