Here are some of the best quotes on character from famous people, some of whom were real characters themselves…
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
Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.
—Elmer G. Letterman
Without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety, it is impossible for the character to be established.
—Confucius
Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.
—Elbert Hubbard
People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence.
—Elihu Burritt
Our character…is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.
—George Santayana
In attempts to improve your character, know what is in your power and what is beyond it.
—Francis Thompson
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the
soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
—Helen Keller
Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else’s traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man’s character is, the better it fits him.
—Cicero
A man’s character is his fate.
—Heraclitus
People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
—Hermann Hesse
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
—James A. Froude
When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.
—Japanese Proverb
Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I take it as a man’s duty to restrain himself.
—Lois McMaster Bujold
One can acquire everything in solitude – except character.
—Marie Henri Beyle
To succeed is nothing, it’s an accident. but to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different: it is character.
—Marie Leneru
Character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self respect springs.
—Joan Didion
I could never think well of a man’s intellectual or moral character, if he was habitually unfaithful to his appointments.
—Nathaniel Emmons
The character of a man is known from his conversations.
—Menander
Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath.
—Solon
The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.
—Oscar Levant
The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character.
—Isabelle Eberhardt
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans.
—Ronald Reagan
I appreciate people who are civil, whether they mean it or not. I think: Be civil. Do not cherish your opinion over my feelings. There’s a vanity to candor that isn’t really worth it. Be kind.
—Richard Greenberg
Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.
—Sam Ewing
You can tell the character of every man when you see how he receives praise.
—Seneca
Strong feelings do not necessarily make a strong character. The strength of a man is to be measured by the power of the feelings he subdues not by the power of those which subdue him.
—William Carleton
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
—W. Somerset Maugham
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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