Quotes About Character

Positive personality traits, while often essential for success, constitute secondary greatness. To focus on personality before character is to try to grow the leaves without the roots

It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. Of course, things can hurt us physically or economically and can cause sorrow. But our character, our basic identity, does not have to be hurt at all. In fact, our most difficult experiences become the crucibles that forge our character and develop the internal powers, the freedom to handle difficult circumstances in the future and to inspire others to do so as well.

Integrity is walk our talk

Many people with secondary greatness—that is, social recognition for their talents—lack primary greatness or goodness in their character. Sooner or later, you'll see this in every long-term relationship they have, whether it is with a business associate, a spouse, a friend, or a teenage child going through an identity crisis. It is character that communicates most eloquently.

We know and accept this fact or principle of process in the area of physical things, but to understand it in emotional areas, in human relations, and even in the area of personal character is less common and more difficult. And

Creating the unity necessary to run an effective business or a family or a marriage requires great personal strength and courage. No amount of technical administrative skill in laboring for the masses can make up for lack of nobility of personal character in developing relationships. It is at a very essential, one-on-one level that we live the primary laws of love and life.

The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.

Quality begins with me. And I need to make my own decisions based on carefully selected principles and values.

In the words of Phillips Brooks: Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now… Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.

If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee. If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy. If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character.

The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature. EZRA TAFT BENSON, FORMER SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE

It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. Of course, things can hurt us physically or economically and can cause sorrow. But our character, our basic identity, does not have to be hurt at all.

A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

Emerson once put it, "What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.

We are what we repeatedly do.

Our new paradigm was created as we invested in the growth and development of our own character.

make decisions based on our values and not how we felt in the moment.

you're not going to talk your way out of a problem you behaved yourself into.

Inside-out" means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self—with your paradigms, your character, and your motives.

Private Victory precedes Public Victory. Self-mastery and self-discipline are the foundation of good relationships with others.

That leadership is primarily a function of who you are, for this is the foundation for everything you do. How do you build leaders? You first build character.

Level 5 leaders display a paradoxical combination of personal humility and professional will, channelling their energy, drive, creativity and discipline in to something larger and more enduring than themselves.

it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.

Integrity includes but goes beyond honesty. Honesty is telling the truth—in other words, conforming our words to reality. Integrity is conforming reality to our words—in other words, keeping promises and fulfilling expectations.