Character traits are valued aspects of a person’s behavior, both good and bad. Inspirational character quotes will challenge the way you think, and help guide you through any life experience.
If you’re searching for best quotation ever to share with the people you love or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of people quotes, awesome quotes about change and motivational education quotes.
Top 10 Character Quotes
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
Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth telling, truth speaking, truth living, and truth loving. – James E. Faust
Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. – Abraham Lincoln

Character contributes to beauty. It fortifies a woman as her youth fades. A mode of conduct, a standard of courage, discipline, fortitude, and integrity can do a great deal to make a woman beautiful. – Jacqueline Bisset
Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. – Unknown
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. – Ayn Rand

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character. – Albert Einstein

The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back. – Abigail Van Buren
When you find a man you wish to marry, Tessa, remember this: You will know what kind of man he is not by the things he says, but by the things he does. – Cassandra Clare
Famous Character Quotes
In the end you should always do the right thing even if it’s hard. – Nicholas Sparks
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. – Mark Twain
The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out. – Thomas B Macaulay
That’s what I consider true generosity: You give your all and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing. – Simone de Beauvoir

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. – James D. Miles
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. – Henry David Thoreau
Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word. – Lord Chesterfield
Reputation is for time; character is for eternity. – J. B. Gough

In reality, we all have our lives, and the accountability for the achievement of our dreams and goals falls strictly on our own shoulders. – Thomas Matt
Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choices of good and evil we have made through life. – John C. Geikie
The true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good. – Ann Landers
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. – Abraham Lincoln

Everyone tries to define this thing called Character. It’s not hard. Character is doing what’s right when nobody’s looking. – Unknown
Dignity is never silent. It has a voice, heart and soul. Truth and courage is its foundation. It will stand against the masses and speak the truth. Because every great person has always done what others found fear in doing. – Shannon L. Alder
Most people say that it’s the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character. – Albert Einstein.
Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence. – Elihu Burritt

Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open. – Elmer G. Letterman
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents. – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out. – Thomas B. Macaulay
Satisfaction of one’s curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. – Linus Pauling

Reputation is what men and women think of us. Character is what God and the angels know of us. – Thomas Paine
Character is the result of two things: Mental attitude and the way we spend our time. – Elbert Hubbard
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character – Albert Einstein
A grateful heart is a beginning of greatness. It is an expression of humility. It is a foundation for the development of such virtues as prayer, faith, courage, contentment, happiness, love, and well-being. – James E. Faust

Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have -Unknown
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power – Abraham Lincoln
If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny. – Andre Maurois
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us. – Jane Austen

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another’s. – Jean Paul
Character is destiny. – Heraclitus
You can not dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself oneJames A. Froude
Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work. – Orison Sweet Marden

Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that’s right is to get by, and the only thing that’s wrong is to get caughtJ.C. Watts
I have vanity and greed enough for one person. But at the same time, I feel in my bones you lose a lot of life’s value if you don’t see yourself as a member of the family of man. – Ralph Waite
Character is much easier kept than recovered. – Thomas Paine

Character is higher than intellect. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice. – Confucius
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

One is what one is, and the dishonesty of hiding behind a degree, or a title, or any manner and collection of words, is still exactly that: dishonest. – Kay Redfield Jamison
Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character. – Stephen Covey
Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming. – Jim Rohn

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving. – Dale Carnegie
Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike. – Theodore Roosevelt
Character is simply habit long continued. – Plutarch

Character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self respect springs. – Joan Didion
I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character! – Theodore Roosevelt
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 Wooden
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. – Oscar Wilde
Character is the sum total of all our everyday choices. – Margaret Jensen
It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. – Frederick Douglass
A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes. – Mohandas K. Gandhi
Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do. – Shaquille Oneal
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. – James Miles
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have no regrets in my life. I think that everything happens to you for a reason. The hard times that you go through build character, making you a much stronger person. – Rita Mero
Character is the salesperson. – George M. Adams
How true Daddy’s words were when he said: all children must look after their own upbringing. Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands. – Anne Frank
Knowledge will give you power, but character respect. – Bruce Lee
Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered. – Aeschylus
It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is. – Henri Frederic Amiel
Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids. – Aristotle
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. – Kahlil Gibran
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. – Kurt Vonnegut Jr
The man who cannot believe in himself cannot believe in anything else. The basis of all integrity and character is whatever faith we have in our own integrity. – Roy L Smith
Our true character is that person we become when no one is watching. – Unknown
Talents are best nurtured in solitude. Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him. – Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared; but only men of character are trustedAlfred Adler
Ability can take you the top, but it takes character to keep you there. – Zig Ziglar
Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking. – H. Jackson Brown