Quotes About Character

May your mind be thoroughly impressed with the absolute necessity of universal virtue and goodness, as the only sure road to happiness, and may you walk therein with undeviating steps.

You have seen power in its various forms--a benign deity, when exercised in the suppression of fraud, injustice, and tyranny, but a demon, when united with unbounded ambition--a wide-wasting fury, who has destroyed her thousands. Not an age of the world but has produced characters, to which whole human hecatombs have been sacrificed.

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. . . . Great necessities call out great virtues.

The Character which a youth acquires in the early part of his Life is of great importance towards his future prosperity-one false step may prove irretrievable to his future usefulness.

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.

Great necessities call out great virtues.

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed...the habits of a vigorous mind are formed contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.

The natural tenderness and delicacy of our constitution, added to the many dangers we are subject to from your sex, renders it almost impossible for a single lady to travel without injury to her character. And those who have a protector in a husband have, generally speaking, obstacles to prevent their roving.

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.

Above all, you must fight conceit, envy, and every kind of ill-feeling in your heart.

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline...

When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people.

I regard no man as poor who has a godly mother.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.

No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.

Every man over forty is responsible for his face.

It has ever been my experience that folks who have no vices, have very few virtues.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

The President last night had a dream. He was in a party of plain people and as it became known who he was they began to comment on his appearance. One of them said, "He is a common-looking man." The President replied, "Common-looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them."

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.

If there ever could be a proper time for mere catch arguments, that time surely is not now. In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity.