Quotes About Character

Prayer is often a temptation to bank on a miracle of God instead of on a moral issue, i.e., it is much easier to ask God to do my work than it is to do it myself. Until we are disciplined properly, we will always be inclined to bank on God's miracles and refuse to do the moral thing ourselves. It is our job, and it will never be done unless we do it.

I would rather be right than President.

No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it.

Pride, perceiving humility honourable, often borrows her cloak.

If principle is good for anything, it is worth living up to.

There is no other solution to a man's problems but the day's honest work, the day's honest decisions, the day's generous utterance, and the day's good deed.

Life is the acceptance of responsibilities or their evasion; it is a business of meeting obligations or avoiding them. To every man the choice is continually being offered, and by the manner of his choosing you may fairly measure him.

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?

Nothing endures but personal qualities.

He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

A dimple in the chin; a devil within.

A man of words and not of deeds, Is like a garden full of weeds.

Each man's character shapes his fortunes.

Reform must come from within, not from without. You cannot legislate for virtue.

The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation; that away, Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.

By their fruits ye shall know them.

Let them know a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.

No matter how ill we may be, nor how low we may have fallen, we should not change identity with any other person.

Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no others are, and to do what no other can do.

What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.

No amount of study or learning will make a man a leader unless he has the natural qualities of one.

Sir, I would rather be right than be President.

People who are born even-tempered, placid and untroubled-secure from violent passions or temptations to evil-those who have never needed to struggle all night with the angel to emerge lame but victorious at dawn, never become great saints.

To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and make a fall.