Quotes About Character

The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not it is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.

Money should never change one's values…. Making money is only a report card. It's a way to tell how you're doing.

Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.

Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate and generous - not just to some people in some circumstances - but to everyone all the time.

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.

Honesty, disinterestedness and good nature are indispensable to procure the esteem and confidence of those with whom we live, and on whose esteem our happiness depends.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

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

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man has cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.

He is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

When a man has cast his longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.

A man is known by the company he keeps. A company is known by the men it keeps.

Integrity reveals beauty.

The result was that Preston successfully negotiated quite a few decades without ever coming within hailing distance of puberty. In this state of arrested development, he defiantly lived through many a perverse adventure. And he still lives in the pages of those books I wrote about him, though I stopped writing them some years ago.

Sanity, however, was so integral to his character that neither hysteria nor horror could long have their way with him.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

Humility, that low, sweet root, From which all heavenly virtues shoot.

Our learning ought to be our lives' amendment, and the fruits of our private study ought to appear in our public behavior.

Characer is much easier kept than recovered.