Character Quotes

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

Hermann Hesse

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

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy.

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf

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

James A. Froude

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

Johann von Goethe

Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without.

John Stuart Mill

Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

John Wooden

It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

Alexander Hamilton, Speech on 21 June 1788 urging ratification of the Constitution in New York.

The character of a man is known from his conversations.

Menande

Character is what you are in the dark.

American Prove

In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.

Plutarch

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

Thomas Paine

The delicate thing about the university is that it has a mixed character, that it is suspended between its position in the eternal world, with all its corruption and evils and cruelties, and the splendid world of our imagination.

Richard Hofstadte

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

Johann von Goethe

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Helen Kelle

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

Elihu Burritt

A man of character in peace is a man of courage in war.

Sir James Glove

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

Knowledge is essential to conquest; only according to our ignorance are we helpless. Thought creates character. Character can dominate conditions. Will creates circumstances and environment.

Anne Besant

Character is who you are when no one is looking.

Allan Williams

Movements born in hatred very quickly take on the characteristics of the thing they oppose.

J. S. Habgood

This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor to change the character of our thought.

Lin Yutang

To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.

W. Somerset Maugham

It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.

Dietrich Bonhoeffe

What makes a good follower The single most important characteristic may well be a willingness to tell the truth. In a world of growing complexity leaders are increasingly dependent on their subordinates for good information, whether the leaders want to hear it or not. Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination.

Warren Bennis

To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.

William Hazlitt, on the Pleasure of Hating

If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, Here comes number seventy - One.

Richard M. Devos

I used to be a lawyer, but now I am a reformed character.

Woodrow Wilson

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.

Bernard Mannes Baruch

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

Albert Einstein

Without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety, it is impossible for the character to be established.

Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.

Henry Ford

When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

Confucius

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

James Albert Michene

A man has no more character than he can command in a time of crisis.

Anonymous

We learn our virtues from our friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection.

Ricthe

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

John Wooden