Quotations on Character

Character is a victory, not a gift.

~ Unknown

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

~ Georg C. Lichtenberg

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

What you are thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

~ Benjamin Disraeli

Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance. It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can make them something else.

~ Thomas Carlyle

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.

~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

You must look into people, as well as at them.

~ Earl of Chesterfield

Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.

~ Henry Clay

Man's character is his fate.

~ Heraclitus

Every man has three characters - that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.

~ Alphonse Karr

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's.

~ Jean Paul Richter