quotations about character
My road must be through Character to Power: I will try no other course, and I am sanguine enough to believe that this course, though not perhaps the quickest, is the surest.
LORD CANNING
attributed, Fraser's Magazine, November 1859
Most people realize their weak and undesirable characteristics, but, in many cases, people believe that this is their natural temperament and cannot be changed. This conclusion manifestly is erroneous. Many people are too self-indulgent to make an effort to modify or correct an undesirable characteristic, yet their characters are being modified and changed by association with people of more positive, and they unconsciously transmit these thoughts to the subconscious mind, and it never fails to act in accordance with whatever decree they make.
WALTER MATTHEWS
Human Life from Many Angles
Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
My Day
The greatest architecture is building character.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
In books and in life, you need to read several pages before someone's true character is revealed.
GAIL CARSON LEVINE
attributed, "5 Lessons You Can Learn from Classic Novels"
The ideal of character always runs beyond the attainment.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
There is something in the character of every man which cannot be broken in--the skeleton of his character; and to try to alter this is like training a sheep for draught purposes.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
The Reflections of Lichtenberg
The characters of man's heart, blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him that searcheth hearts.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
A man must be very inert to have no character at all.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Society and of Conversation", Les Caractères
A great and frequent error in our judgment of human nature is to suppose that those sentiments and feelings have no existence, which may be only for a time concealed. The precious metals are not found at the surface of the earth, except in sandy places.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Fortunes are made by taking opportunities: character is made by making them.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.
SAMUEL SMILES
Self-Help
Our character is our will; for what we will we are.
HENRY EDWARD MANNING
Towards Evening: Extracts from the Writings of Cardinal Manning
So many different characters live within us
All looking for love
JANET JACKSON
"Looking for Love"
Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.
HENRY CLAY
The Clay Code
We never know a great character until something congenial to it has grown up within ourselves.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts