Top 100 Men Of Character Quotes
#1. Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared; but only men of character are trusted.
Alfred Adler
#2. Men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#3. Men of character always differentiate their long letters, however illegibly they may write. - Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
#4. Tom looked more and more like a rabbi. As is the way of men of character in provincial towns, he tended to become a collection of mannerisms, a caricature of himself.
Frank O'Connor
#5. What is important is to try to develop insights and wisdom rather than mere knowledge, respect someone's character rather than his learning, and nurture men of character rather than mere talents.
Inazo Nitobe
#6. I desire to assist in attracting to this profession young men of character and ability, also to help those already engaged in the profession to acquire the highest moral and intellectual training.
Joseph Pulitzer
#8. Men of character continued to sail to their death for men of greed.
Barry Lopez
#9. Alaska did not produce supermen, but in its formative periods it was served by men of character and determination, and it is a fortunate land which knows such public servants.
James A. Michener
#10. I admire men of character and I judge character not by how men deal with their superiors, but mostly how they deal with their subordinates. And that, to me, is where you find out what the character of a man is.
Norman Schwarzkopf
#11. There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. History reveals men's deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, unpenetrated and unguessed.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
#12. Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers. He was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken; but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character.
Frederick Douglass
#13. The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents; and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole spring of actions.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
#14. Character - in things great and small - is indicated when a man (or person) pursues with sustained follow-through what he feels himself capable of doing.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#15. In fact, the underlying principle of the baroque is the idea of transformation, of movement, and animals becoming man, and man becoming animals, and mythology. It was a way to inspire pre-Christian character.
Camille Henrot
#16. The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior.
Earl Warren
#17. There are black men who are madly in love with white women. God bless them, if that's what works for them. I just hope that we can strike a balance that portrays black folks and the black family in a light that's not extreme. Those are the types of characters that I find myself attracted to.
Nia Long
#18. Put simply the novel stands between us and the hardening concept of statistical man. There is no other medium in which we can live for so long and so intimately with a character. That is the service a novel renders.
William Golding
#19. If we think of the novel and the epic ... The difference lies in the fact that the important thing about the epic is a hero
a man who is a pattern for all men. While, as Mencken pointed out, the essence of most novels lies in the breaking down of a man, in the degeneration of character.
Jorge Luis Borges
#21. When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own.
Joseph P. Farrell
#22. Man can have strength of character only as he is capable of controlling his faculties; of choosing a rational end; and, in its pursuit, of holding fast to his integrity against al! the might of external nature.
Mark Hopkins
#23. Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.
Bertrand Russell
#24. The outward is only the outside of that which is within. Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by them; they are their true clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
#25. All these boundaries - Africa, Asia, Malaysia, America - are set by men. But you don't have to look at boundaries when you are looking at a man - at the character of a man. The question is: What do you stand for? Are you a follower, or are you a leader?
Hakeem Olajuwon
#27. We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.
William Shakespeare
#28. I care about Roger Sterling, one of the most subtle and amazing characters in dramatic history [Mad men]. This guys who knows precisely who he is, yet leaves us time after time hoping desperately for him to finally grab control of his life and some responsibility for those around him.
Chris Matthews
#29. There is no masculine psychology in my cinema. There is only the resentments and desires of women. A man should not attempt to recognize himself in my male characters. On the other hand, he can find [in the films] a better understanding of women. And knowledge of the other is the highest goal.
Catherine Breillat
#30. The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.
Samuel Smiles
#31. A low standard of prayer means a low standard of character and a low standard of service. Those alone labor effectively among men who impetuously fling themselves upward towards God.
Charles Brent
#32. It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#33. So much are our minds influenced by the accidents of our bodies, that every man is more the man of the day than a regular and consequential character.
Lord Chesterfield
#34. There are not anywhere else so many ways of trickery, so many false lights, so many veils, so many guises, so many illusive deceits, as are practiced in every man's conscience in respect to his motives, thoughts, feelings, conduct, and character.
Henry Ward Beecher
#35. Manliness means perfect manhood, as womanliness implies perfect womanhood. Manliness is the character of a man as he ought to be, as he was meant to be.
James Freeman Clarke
#36. I feel that we should try and understand how we as women storytellers have often fallen into the mode of telling stories in the ways in which traditionally men would. I often find that my points of view are expressed by male characters.
Danae Elon
#37. Men of stainless character and self purification will easily inspire confidence and automatically purify the atmosphere around them.
Mahatma Gandhi
#38. Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#40. Intuition is the lifeblood of a woman and the essential character of a man.-Serena Jade
Serena Jade
#41. My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence.
Bernard Law Montgomery
#42. The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive; the mere honest man does that from duty which the man of honor does for the sake of character.
William Shenstone
#43. Let us learn how the love of Christ, received into the heart, triumphs gradually but surely over all sin, transforms character, turning even its weakness into strength, and so, from the depths of transgression and the very gates of hell, raises men to God.
Alexander MacLaren
#44. Adolescence is the time to enlarge the natural sentiments of pity, friendship, and generosity, the time to develop an understanding of human nature and the varieties of human character, the time to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of all men and to study the history of mankind.
Louise J. Kaplan
#45. Women have a faith in themselves that is unpragmatic and in each other that's just emotional and f - ing strong. Both of those characters are criticized for being weak, for being subject to a man, but I think that that's a really bold and natural thing that we all want.
Kristen Stewart
#46. Surely, 'tis one step towards acting well, to think worthily of our nature; and as in common life, the way to make a man honest, is, to suppose him soso here, to set some value upon ourselves, enables us to support the characterof generosity and virtue.
Laurence Sterne
#47. A man of bad character punishes his own soul.
Al-Ghazali
#48. There is a natural disposition with us to judge an author's personal character by the character of his works. We find it difficult to understand the common antithesis of a good writer and a bad man.
Edwin Percy Whipple
#49. Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.
Samuel Johnson
#50. It is profound philosophy to sound the depths of feeling and distinguish traits of character. Men must be studied as deeply as books.
Baltasar Gracian
#51. Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him up in his hands like a bit of paper.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#52. If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.
Woodrow Wilson
#53. In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#54. The only way of really finding out a man's true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself.
P.G. Wodehouse
#55. Many men are mere warehouses full of merchandise
the head, the heart, are stuffed with goods ... There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and joy, and worship, but they are all deserted now, and the rooms are filled with earthy and material things.
Henry Ward Beecher
#57. A man is known to his dog by the smell, to his tailor by the coat, to his friend by the smile; each of these know him, but how little or how much depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man is known only to God.
John Ruskin
#58. Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's faces that is honored wherever presented. You cannot help trusting such men. Their very presence gives confidence. There is promise to pay in their faces which gives confidence and you prefer it to another man's endorsement. Character is credit.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#59. With so many willing, complex women in the world, he had little respect for men who fixated on girlishness. Innocence was, by definition, an absence of experience - character - knowledge. To desire that absence seemed rather deviant.
Meredith Duran
#60. Character is the direct result of mental attitude. I believe that character is higher than the intellect. I believe that leadership is in sacrifice, in self-denial, in humility and in the perfectly disciplined will. This is the distinction between great and little men.
Vince Lombardi
#61. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
Edmund Burke
#62. The man who now confronted Gashford, was a squat, thickset personage, with a low, retreating forehead, a coarse shock head of hair, and eyes so small and near together, that his broken nose alone seemed to prevent their meeting and fusing into one of the usual size.
Charles Dickens
#63. Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#64. To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.
Mark Twain
#65. To have a right estimate of a man's character, we must see him in misfortune.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#66. Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy.
Marquis De Sade
#67. One of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organization is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organizations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their home-made monsters.
Aldous Huxley
#68. You get to know more of the character of a man in a round of golf than in six months of political experience.
David Lloyd George
#69. What has a man's face to do with his character? Can a man of good character help having a disagreeable face?
Ann Radcliffe
#70. Faith in the hereafter is as necessary for the intellectual as the moral character; and to the man of letters, as well as to the Christian, the present forms but the slightest portion of his existence.
Robert Southey
#71. His effect on men is one of interest and curiosity, not of admiration and loyalty. His power is the power of gifts, not character. Men watch him, but do not follow him.
William Manchester
#72. This absurd, godless world is, then, peopled with men who think clearly and have ceased to hope. And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator.
Albert Camus
#73. We live in an age fit for heroes. No time has ever offered such perils or prizes ... The test of this century will be whether man confuses the growth of wealth and power with the growth of spirit and character.
Vince Lombardi
#74. I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of hard luck. A good character, good habits and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all ill-luck that fools ever dreamed.
Joseph Addison
#75. He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a Cretan-a system of ethics above all others calculated to win popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society.
Thomas Hardy
#76. There is nothing that so raises a young man's self-esteem, that so contributes to the formation of his character as for him to find himself unexpectedly confronted with a task which he has to accomplish entirely on his own initiative and by his own efforts.
Stefan Zweig
#77. It is in the relaxation of security; it is in the expansion of prosperity; it is in the hour of dilatation of the heart, and of its softening into festivity and pleasure, that the real character of men is discerned.
Edmund Burke
#78. A man's true estate of power and riches is to be in himself; not in his dwelling or position or external relations, but in his own essential character.
Henry Ward Beecher
#79. The expression of a man's face is commonly a help to his thoughts, or glossary on his speech; but the countenance of Newman Noggs, in his ordinary moods, was a problem which no stretch of ingenuity could solve.
Charles Dickens
#80. A person of character takes as much trouble to discover what is right as the lesser men take to discover what will pay.
Confucius
#81. Fortunately, there is a sane equilibrium in the character of nations, as there is in that of men.
Jose Marti
#82. Hundreds of wise men cannot make the world a heaven, but one idiot is enough to turn it into a hell.
Raheel Farooq
#83. You can stop a raging forest fire, a herd of stampeding buffalo or even a runaway freight train, but you can't stop a good man.
John Paul Warren
#84. Experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a state depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men; for the nation is only the aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of personal, improvement.
Samuel Smiles
#85. [We should] suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man.
Edward Gibbon
#86. There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones.
George Bernard Shaw
#87. If a man has a very decided character, has a strongly accentuated career, it is normally the case of course that he makes ardent friends and bitter enemies.
Theodore Roosevelt
#88. Men are not to be judged by their looks, habits, and appearances; but by the character of their lives and conversations, and by their works.
Roger L'Estrange
#89. Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within.
Plutarch
#90. Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#91. I definitely try to play a common man in my roles so people can identify with my characters, but the truth of the matter is that it doesn't really matter what I do or my lines are, I'm still Zach Braff, and people know I'm better than them.
Zach Braff
#92. In the case of complex personalities the matter stands thus: one of these can understand other men better than they can understand themselves, because within himself he has not only the character he is grasping, but also its opposite. Duality is necessary for observation and comprehension.
Otto Weininger
#93. The administration of government lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence.
Confucius
#94. Energy of will may be defined to be the very central power of character in a man.
Samuel Smiles
#95. As my object was not myself, I set out with the determination, and happily with the disposition, of not being moved by praise or censure, friendship or calumny, nor of being drawn from my purpose by any personal altercation; and the man who cannot do this, is not fit for a public character.
Thomas Paine
#96. In peace and prosperity states and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy supply of daily wants and so proves a rough master that brings most men's characters to a level with their fortunes
Thucydides
#97. The structure of human betterment cannot be built upon foundations of materialism or business, but upon the bedrock of individual character in free men and women.
Herbert Hoover
#98. Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His character determines the character of the organization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#99. Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.
Daniel J. Boorstin
#100. Your reputation is what others think of you; your character is what you truly are. Reputations can be manipulated; character can only be developed and maintained.
Bohdi Sanders
