Character Quotes

Probably the most distinctive characteristic of the successful politician is selective cowardice.

Richard Harris

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.

Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.

Paxton Hood

Bear in mind that brains and learning, like muscle and physical skill, are articles of commerce. They are bought and sold. You can hire them by the year or by the hour. The only thing in the world not for sale is character.

Antonin Scalia

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Character is the foundation stone upon which one must build to win respect. Just as no worthy building can be erected on a weak foundation, so no lasting reputation worthy of respect can be built on a weak character.

R. C. Samsel

When writing a novel a writer should create living people people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Ernest Hemingway

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I was going to sue for defamation of character, but then I realised I have no character.

Charles Barkley, "they said it" in Sports Illustrated

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Stendhal

Character is power.

Booker T. Washington

Watch your thoughts they become words. Watch your words they become actions. Watch your actions they become habits. Watch your habits they become character. Watch your character it becomes your destiny.

Patrick Overton

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Parents can only advise their children or point them in the right direction. Ultimately people shape their own characters.

Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious and may revolutionize a whole town.

Eleanor H. Porte

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

In making up the character of God, the old theologians failed to mention that He is of infinite cheerfulness. The omission has caused the world much tribulation.

Michael Monahan

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

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

Rose Dorothy Freeman

Commitment in the face of conflict produces character.

Unknown

Freedom and indedendence form my character.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Founder of modern Turkey 24. 04. 1921

It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy - From lack of character.

Dag Hammarskjld

When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

Confucius

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Eleanor Roosevelt, My Day

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

James A. Froude

In later life, as in earlier, only a few persons influence the formation of our character the multitude pass us by like a distant army.

Jean Paul Friedrich Richte

One can acquire everything in solitude, except character.

Marie Stendhal

The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick - Sighted thence proceeds mawkishness.

John Keats

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

Albert Einstein

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

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.

Samuel Johnson

It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and dishonest one; but success will be of a truer kind, earned without fraud or injustice. And even though a man should for a time be unsuccessful, still he must be honest; better to lose all and save character. For character is itself a fortune.

Samuel Smiles

Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.

Philip Dormer Chesterfield

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

James Russell Lowell

There is no leveler like Christianity, but it levels by lifting all who receive it to the lofty table - Land of a true character and of undying hope both for this world and the next.

Johathan Edwards

It seems to me that perfection of means and confusion of goals seems to characterize our age.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

One can acquire everything in solitude - Except character.

Marie Henri Beyle