 |
 | "A good character is, in all cases, the fruit of personal exertion.
It is not inherited from parents; it is not created by external
advantages; it is no necessary appendage of birth, wealth, talents, or
station; but it is the result of one"s own endeavors?the fruit and reward
of good principles manifested in a course of virtuous and honorable
action." | |
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J. Hawes
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| "A man?s character is his fate." | |
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Heraclitus
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| "A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he
resents." | |
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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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| "Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you
there." | |
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John Wooden
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| "Action, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may
spell character." | |
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Johann Kaspar Lavater
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| "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little
queer." | |
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Robert Owen
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| "All your life, you have heard yourself denounced; not for your
faults, but for your greatest virtues. You have been hated, not for your
mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been scorned for all those
qualities of character which are your highest " | |
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Ayn Rand
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| "Be your character what it will, it will be known; And nobody will
take it upon your word." | |
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Philip Dormer Shanhope, Lord Chesterfield
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| "By constant self-discipline and self-control you can develop
greatness of character." | |
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Grenville Kleiser
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| "Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible
swiftness." | |
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Faith Baldwin
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| "Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth
tries." | |
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James Albert Michener
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| "Character is a victory, not a gift." | |
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Proverb
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| "Character is doing the right thing when nobody"s looking. There are
too many people who think that the only thing that"s right is to get
by, and the only thing that"s wrong is to get caught." | |
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J. C. Watts
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| "Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is
what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." | |
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Abraham Lincoln
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| "Character is much easier kept than recovered." | |
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Thomas Paine
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| "Character is not made in a crisis it is only exhibited." | |
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Robert Freeman
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| "Character is power." | |
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Booker T. Washington
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| "Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of
things a man chooses or avoids" | |
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Aristotle
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| "Character is what you are in the dark." | |
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Dwight L. Moody
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| "Character isn"t inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks
and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or
anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains." | |
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Helen Douglas
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| "Character: The ability to carry out a worthy decision after the
emotion of making that decision has passed. Character simply stated is
doing what you said you were going to do. If you develop a reputation for
that, do you have any idea the effect that has on self-perception? Its
immense, just immense. The Savior was a man of character. He did
everything he said he was going to do. Note: For Hyrum Smith?s other ideas
which he regards as pertinent to Success, see Topics: Character, Charity,
Goals, Humility, Peace of Mind, Sacrifice, Success?Change?Personal Growth,
Success?Change?Constructive Imagination, Wisdom" | |
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Hyrum W. Smith
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| "Characters do not change.- Opinions alter, but characters Are only
developed." | |
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Benjamin Disraeli
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| "Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the
instruments of the wise." | |
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Samuel Lover
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| "Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He
imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his
own." | |
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Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle
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| "Few men have been admired by their own households." | |
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Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
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| "He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more
excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances." | |
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David Hume
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| "How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed
time of character." | |
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Henry David Thoreau
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| "How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but
to be someone." | |
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Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel
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| "I am far from underestimating the importance of dividends, but I
rank dividends below human character." | |
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Theodore Roosevelt
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| "I don"t invent characters because the Almighty has already invented
millions. Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but
learn how to read them." | |
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Isaac Bashevis Singer
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| "If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you
want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you, what people
think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil
everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of
everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose." | |
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Charles Kingsley
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| "In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow, Thou art such a touchy,
testy, pleasant fellow; Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about
thee, That there"s no living with thee, or without thee." | |
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Martial
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| "In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow, Thou"rt such a touchy,
testy, pleasant fellow, Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee." | |
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Joseph Addison
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| "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.
One friend, one teacher, one beloved, one club, one dining table, one work
table are the means by which one"s nation and the spirit of one"s nation
affect the individual." | |
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Jean Paul Richter
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| "Industry, thrift, and self-control are not sought because they
create wealth, but because they create character." | |
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John Calvin Coolidge
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| "It is an old saying, and one of fearful and fathomless import, that
we are forming characters for eternity. Form- ing characters? Whose? Our
own or others? Both?and in that momentous act lies the peril and
responsibility of our existence." | |
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Elihu Burritt
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| "Many a man"s reputation would not know his character if they met on
the street." | |
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Elbert Hubbard
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| "Occasions do not make a man either strong or weak; they show what he
is." | |
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Thomas à Kempis
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| "Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so
highly prized as that of character." | |
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Henry Clay
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| "Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking." | |
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H. Jackson Browne
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| "Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies teach us what we
must do." | |
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Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
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| "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to
heaven." | |
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William Shakespeare
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| "Self-respect is the very cement of character, without which
character will not form nor stand; a personal ideal is the only possible
foundation for self-respect, without which self-respect degenerates into
vanity or conceit, or is lost entirely, its place being taken by
worthlessness and the consciousness of worthlessness; and that is the end
of all character. It is often said that if we do not respect ourselves no
one else will respect us; this is rather a dangerous way to put it; let us
rather say that if we are not worthy of our own respect we cannot claim the
respect of others. True self-respect is a matter of being and never of mere
seeming. As Paulsen says, "It is vanity that desires first of all to be
seen and admired, and then, if possible, really to be something; whereas
proper self esteem desires first of all to be something, and" then, if
possible, to have its worth recognized."" | |
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Edward O. Sisson
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| "Small kindnesses, small courtesies, small considerations, habitually
practiced in our social intercourse, give a greater charm to the character
than the display of great talent and accomplishments." | |
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Kelty
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| "Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great
temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real
struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided
whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall
miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a
steady, long-continued process." | |
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Phillips Brooks
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| "Success is always temporary. When all is said and done, the only
thing you"ll have left is your character." | |
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Vince Gill
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| "Such mistress, such Nan, Such master, such man." | |
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Thomas Tusser
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| "The fate of all extremes is such Men may be read, as well as books,
too much. To observations which ourselves we make, We grow more partial
for th" observer"s sake." | |
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Alexander Pope
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| "The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this
nation was built are: Initiative, Imagination, Individuality and
Independence." | |
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Captain Edward "Eddie" Vernon Rickenbacker
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| "The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune." | |
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Plutarch
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| "The measure of a man"s real character is what he would do if he knew
he would never be found out." | |
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Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay
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| "The moment a question comes to your mind, see yourself mentally
taking hold of it and disposing of it. In that moment is your choice made.
Thus you learn to take the path to the right. Thus you learn to become the
decider and not the vacillator. Thus you build character." | |
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H. Van Anderson
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| "The tragedy of the man who has found himself out." | |
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Sir James Matthew Barrie
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| "The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but
how we behave when we don"t know what to do." | |
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John Holt
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| "The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of
the cities, nor the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns
out." | |
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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| "These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in
the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great
challenges are formed.... Great necessities call out great virtues." | |
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Abigail Smith Adams
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| "To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It
makes it easier to stoop the next time." | |
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Katharine Hepburn
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| "Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of
character." | |
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Oscar Levant
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| "We knew before we came (to earth) that there would be many adverse
circumstances to test us: accidents, sickness, and disease to prove us;
temptations and distractions to try us; disappointments, discouragements,
reverses, failures and all kinds of situations to determine our
character." | |
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Robert E. Wells
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| "Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be
amended." | |
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François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
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| "When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in
our life, or in the life of another." | |
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Helen Adams Keller
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| "You can tell a lot about a fellow"s character by his way of eating
jelly beans." | |
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Ronald Wilson Reagan
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| "You can tell what a man is by what he does when he hasn?t anything
to do." | |
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Unknown
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| "You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and
forge yourself one." | |
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James A. Froude
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