Quotes on Character
Sports do not build character. They reveal it.
Heywood Hale Broun
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Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is no end to the sufficiency of character. It can afford to wait; it can do without what is called success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I know I have a first-rate mind, but that's no source of pride to me. Intelligent people are a dime a dozen. But I am proud of having character.
Henry Kissinger
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The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.
Abigail Van Buren
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Football doesn't build character. It eliminates the weak ones.
Darrell Royal
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Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein
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The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln
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Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.
Phillips Brooks
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Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
Aristotle
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The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character.
Isabelle Eberhardt
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A man's treatment of money is the most decisive test of his character - how he makes it and how he spends it.
James Moffatt
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Character is the real foundation of all worthwhile success.
John Hammond
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You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
Abraham Lincoln
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A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Capitalism is the only system in the world founded on credit and character.
Hubert Eaton
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As diamonds cut diamonds, and one hone smooths a second, all the parts of intellect are whetstones to each other; and genius, which is but the result of their mutual sharpening, is character too.
Cyrus Bartol
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Our success in war and peace depends not on luck, or rhetoric, or the intervention of mythical gods; it depends on human character and modern scientific creations, and on respect for the meaning and methods of science.
Harlow Shapley
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Courage combined with integrity is the foundation of character.
Brian Tracy
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Sow an action and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.
William James
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Mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance.
James Allen
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Cause and effect is as absolute and undeviating in the hidden realm of thought as in the world of visible and material things. A noble and Godlike character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with Godlike thoughts. An ignoble and bestial character, by the same process, is the result of the continued harboring of groveling thoughts.
James Allen
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Man is the master of thought, the molder of character, and the maker and shaper of condition, environment, and destiny.
James Allen
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To character and success, two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together - humble dependence and manly independence; humble dependence on God and manly reliance on self.
William Wordsworth
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Strength of character means strong feelings, and strong command over them. This is where foresight, judgment, and will-power unite to form the most vital and important cement of a strong personality. To subordinate the lower nature to the higher, to be able to forego a present pleasure for a greater future good, is a distinguishing mark of the highest type of character. Self-denial is essential to manhood; for, to make one's life count, demands sacrifice.
Councillor
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A character standard is far more important than even a gold standard. The success of all economic systems is still dependent upon both righteous leaders and righteous people. In the last analysis, our national future depends upon our national character - that is, whether it is spiritually or materially minded.
Roger Babson
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Character is formed, not by laws, commands, and decrees, but by quiet influence, unconscious suggestion and personal guidance.
Marion Burton
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What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be; all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.
Socrates
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Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
John Wooden
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You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
James Froude
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Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.
Phillips Brooks
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When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.
Billy Graham
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Character is the result of hundreds and hundreds of choices you make that gradually turn who you are, at any given moment, into who you want to be.
Jim Rohn
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Character is a quality that embodies many important traits, such as integrity, courage, perseverance, confidence and wisdom. Unlike your fingerprints that you are born with and can´t change, character is something that you create within yourself and must take responsibility for changing.
Jim Rohn
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Courage combined with integrity is the foundation of character.
Brian Tracy
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Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Aristotle
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Character is the sum total of all our everyday choices.
Margaret Jensen
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There is nothing so fatal to character as half finished tasks.
David Lloyd George
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No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Be the kind of person others admire, can count on, trust, and enjoy spending time with. After you have developed that reputation, people will start to ask you what you do and you will be amazed at how many people will want to work with you. You will attract others based on your character.
Larry Winget
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Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings. Only one thing endures, and that is character.
Horace Greeley
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The virtue of man ought to be measured, not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his everyday conduct.
Blaise Pascal
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It is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.
Stephen Covey
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To achieve something that you have never achieved before, you must become something that you have never been before.
Les Brown
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Character is the ability to follow through on a resolution after the enthusiasm with which the resolution was made has passed.
Brian Tracy
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The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.
Aristotle
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A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thought.
James Allen
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Your self-esteem is largely determined by the relationship between your self-image, how you are performing in your day-to-day activities, and your self-ideal, the way you would perform if you were the very best person you could be. The more that your day-to-day activities are consistent with the person you want to become, the higher is your self-esteem.
Brian Tracy
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Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.
Francis Bacon
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Character is not made in a crisis - it is only exhibited.
Robert Freeman
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There's only one story in life for which you'll have every answer: the truth. If you live an exemplary life, and do what you're supposed to do, you walk down the block and you don't worry if someone is tapping you on the shoulder asking a question.
Bob Hurley
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The inside out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.
Stephen Covey
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Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
James Michener
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Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through the experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Helen Keller
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Without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety, it is impossible for the character to be established.
Confucius
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Character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life - is the source from which self respect springs.
Joan Didion
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Cultivate these, then, for they are wholly within your power: sincerity and dignity; industriousness, and sobriety. Avoid grumbling, be frugal, considerate, and frank; be temperate in manner and speech; carry yourself with authority.
Marcus Aurelius
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A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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Every decision you make — every decision — is not a decision about what to do. It’s a decision about Who You Are. When you see this, when you understand it, everything changes. You begin to see life in a new way. All events, occurrences, and situations turn into opportunities to do what you came here to do.
Neale Walsch
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The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls - the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.
Henry David Thoreau
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Fixable but unfixed bad performance is bad character and tends to create more of itself, causing more damage to the excuse giver with each tolerated instance.
Charlie Munger
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If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people's opinions, you will never be rich.
Epicurus
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It costs a person an enormous amount of time (and other people's ears an enormous amount of boredom) before he earns such compliments as 'What a learned person!' Let's be content with the much less fashionable label, 'What a good man!'
Seneca
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The first thing that any education ought to give a man is character, and the second thing is education. That is where I'm a little skittish about this college business. I'm not starting in to preach to you, because I know a young fellow with the right sort of stuff in him preaches to himself harder than any one else can, and that he's mighty often switched off the right path by having it pointed out to him in the wrong way.
George Horace Lorimer
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A man's got to lose more than money to be broke. When a fellow's got a straight backbone and a clear eye his creditors don't have to lie awake nights worrying over his liabilities.
George Horace Lorimer
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It's been my experience that it takes about all the thought and work which one man can give to run one man right, and if a fellow's putting in five or six hours a day on his neighbor's character, he's mighty apt to scamp the building of his own.
George Horace Lorimer
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Never affect to be other than you are—either richer or wiser. Never be ashamed to say, 'I do not know.' Men will then believe you when you say, 'I do know.'
Lord Bulwer Lytton
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Never be ashamed to say, whether as applied to time or money, 'I cannot afford it.'—'I cannot afford to waste an hour in the idleness to which you invite me—I cannot afford the guinea you ask me to throw away.'
Learn to say 'No' with decision, 'Yes' with caution; 'No' with decision whenever it resists a temptation; ‘Yes’ with caution whenever it implies a promise. A promise once given is a bond inviolable.
A man is already of consequence in the world when it is known that we can implicitly rely upon him. I have frequently seen in life a person preferred to a long list of applicants for some important charge, which lifts him at once into station and fortune, merely because he has this reputation—that when he says he knows a thing, he knows it, and when he says he will do a thing, he does it.
This is the test of your manhood: How much is there left in you after you have lost everything outside of yourself?
Orison Marden
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Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose.
Evan Esar
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If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character. If you have a weak character, then adversity will mow you down when it appears, as it will, inevitably.
Jordan Peterson
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Set your ambitions, even if you are uncertain about what they should be. The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.
Jordan Peterson
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Try "God willing" over "the will to win" or "willing it into existence," for even those attributes can be broken. True will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility; the other kind of will is weakness disguised by bluster and ambition. See which lasts longer under the hardest of obstacles.
Ryan Holiday
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