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Quotes about character

276 quotes from 175 people

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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 Wooden1910–2010
Noble character is best appreciated in those ages in which it can most readily develop.
Tacitus55–120
Character is higher than intellect… A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882The American Scholar (1837), par. 27
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Ch. XLI
- Knowledge
It is the integrity of each individual human that is in final examination.
Buckminster Fuller1895–1983Critical Path (1981)
There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936Charles Dickens (1906)
- Leadership
In every deed of mischief he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.
Edward Gibbon1737–1794The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776–1788), Chap. 48
Clever men are good, but they are not the best.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855), Goethe.
- Intelligence
Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.
Marcus Aurelius121–180III, 7
- Honor
It would be better for me… that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.
Socrates470–399 BCGorgias, 482c
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
André Gide1869–1951Autumn Leaves, Philosophical eLibrary, 2012, (Feuillets d’automne, 1941, trans. Jeanine Parisier Plottel)
A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.
William Hazlitt1778–1830The Plain Speaker (1826)
- Pride
Now will I show myself to have more of the serpent than the dove; that is, more knave than fool.
Christopher Marlowe1564–1593The Jew of Malta (c. 1589)
Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light
The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.
Nassim Nicholas Talebborn 1960The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 94