Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.
Friedrich Nietzsche – Character, Experience
A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness.
Seneca – Character
Sometimes apparent resemblance of character will bring two men together and for a certain time unite them. But their mistake gradually becomes evident, and they are astonished to find themselves not only far apart, but even repelled, in some sort, at all their points of contact.
Nicolas Chamfort – Character
There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.
George Eliot – Attitude, Character
How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.
Henry David Thoreau – Thought, Character
Surmounting difficulty is the crucible that forms character.
Anthony Robbins – Character
Things don’t go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.
Samuel Johnson – Character, Life
A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.
Samuel Johnson – Character, Abuse
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
Oscar Wilde – Attitude, Character
Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.
Goethe – Character, Laughable
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
Goethe – Character
Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day’s progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.
John Updike – Characters, Literature
A man’s own manner and character is what most becomes him.
Cicero – Manner, Character
Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids.
Aristotle – Character
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
