I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.

- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.

- Maya Angelou

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.

- Abigail Van Buren

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.

- August Wilson

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

- Abraham Lincoln

When you find a man you wish to marry, Tessa, remember this: You will know what kind of man he is not by the things he says, but by the things he does.

- Clockwork Angel, Cassandra Clare

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters

- Albert Einstein

In the end you should always do the right thing even if it's hard.

- The Last Song, Nicholas Sparks

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

- John Wooden

Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness.

- Wonder, R.J. Palacio

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

- Helen Keller

Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

- To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Grudges are for those who insist that they are owed something; forgiveness, however, is for those who are substantial enough to move on.

- Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile, Criss Jami

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

- Mark Twain

Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?

- Cornelia Funke

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.

- Paul McCartney

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A man's true character comes out when he's drunk.

- Charlie Chaplin

It is better to be alone than in bad company.

- George Washington

Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.

- Abraham Lincoln

To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

- Theodore Roosevelt

I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.

- Abraham Lincoln

A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.

- The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle

People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.

- A.A. Milne

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

- Antigone, Sophocles

When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.

- W. Somerset Maugham

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: ‘To rise above little things'.

- John Burroughs

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

- Plato

All cruelty springs from weakness.

- Seneca's Morals: Of a Happy Life, Seneca

I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.

- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Character is doing what you don't want to do but know you should do.

- Joyce Meyer

Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.

- On Self-Respect, Joan Didion

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

- Seneca

Be an independent thinker at all times, and ignore anyone who attempts to define you in a limiting way.

- Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl - A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship, Sherry Argov

Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past.

- Jack London

Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.

- Ann Landers

One's character is set at an early age. The choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life. I hate to see you swim out so far you can't swim back.

- Flipped, Wendelin Van Draanen

A man with no enemies is a man with no character.

- Paul Newman

We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.

- Socrates

You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.

- Ronald Reagan

Choices determine character.

- Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary, Brandon Mull

Your reputation is in the hands of others. That's what the reputation is. You can't control that. The only thing you can control is your character.

- Wayne W. Dyer

When you are joyful, when you say yes to life and have fun and project positivity all around you, you become a sun in the center of every constellation, and people want to be near you.

- Shannon L. Alder

There was a saying that a man's true character was revealed in defeat. I thought it was also revealed in victory.

- Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, Alison Goodman

It's easy to look back and see it, and it's easy to give the advice. But the sad fact is, most people don't look beneath the surface until it's too late.

- Flipped, Wendelin Van Draanen

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.

- James A. Michener

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

- Albert Schweitzer

Protect your good image from the eyes of negative viewers, who may look at your good appearance with an ugly fiendish eye, and ruin your positive qualities with their chemical infested tongues.

- Michael Bassey Johnson

Talent is a gift, but character is a choice.

- John C. Maxwell

Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer today may curse tomorrow and only one thing endures - character.

- Harry Truman

When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.

- Edna O'Brien

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

- Aristotle

Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.

- Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

The greatest battles of life are fought out daily in the silent chambers of the soul.

- David O. McKay

A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.

- As a Man Thinketh, James Allen

You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.

- Richard Bach

God gave you a gift of 84,600 seconds today. Have you used one of them to say thank you?

- William Arthur Ward

People don't change, they just have momentary steps outside of their true character

- The Lie, Chad Kultgen

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

- Bruce Lee

If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself.

- D.L. Moody

Love is proved the moment you let go of someone because they need you to.

- Shannon L. Alder

She taught me I should never do anything in private I did not want talked about in public, and cautioned me not to talk in my sleep.

- The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss

Times will change for the better when you change.

- Maxwell Maltz

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

- Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke

Scars fade with time. And the ones that never go away, well, they build character, maturity, caution.

- The Pregnancy Test, Erin McCarthy

The best way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick alongside it

- D.L. Moody

A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.

- Charles de Gaulle

True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.

- Story: Style, Robert McKee

By judging others, you make yourself easy to judge.

- Ashly Lorenzana

People adjust their behavior to fit the society they live in. They integrate because they have to. But what they are on the inside doesn't change.

- Tough Customer, Sandra Brown

Character is destiny

- Fragments, Heraclitus

We practically always excuse things when we understand them

- A Hero of Our Time, Mikhail Lermontov

Don't write about Man; write about a man.

- Charlotte's Web, E.B. White

Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.

- Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him.

- The Long Fall, Walter Mosley

Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.

- A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, Flannery O'Connor

A woman may be beautiful but have poor character. A man may be a business genius, making money left and right, but lack common courtesy, sensitivity, and compassion.

- Waiting and Dating, Myles Munroe

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

- Hermann Hesse

In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate - look to his character.

- Noah Webster

You're thoughtful, Barbara, but you're not open. You're passionate, but you're hard. You're a good, decent, funny, wonderful woman, and I love you, but you're a pain in the ass.

- August: Osage County, Tracy Letts

Trust is always a good idea. For someone else.

- Sherrilyn Kenyon

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood.

- The Essence of Christianity, Ludwig Feuerbach

I was tired of being me.

- Numbers, Rachel Ward

That wasn't love; that was stupidity.

- Sherrilyn Kenyon

Towns are like people. Old ones often have character, the new ones are interchangeable.

- Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner

A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.

- Human, Friedrich Nietzsche

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.

- Abigail Adams

Easily mistaken, it is not about a love for adversity, it is about knowing a strength and a faith so great that adversity, in all its adverse manifestations, hardly even exists.

- Killosophy, Criss Jami

It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.

- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

In his opinion, working was vastly overrated. Particularly as a way to build character, for everyone who engaged in it was far too snappish and fussy, and seemed to have no manners at all.

- Crown of Earth, Hilari Bell

It's not what you do but that kind of job you do that makes the difference.

- Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, Ben Carson

There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.

- Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction, Charles Baxter

There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.

- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

I've discovered that in life, it doesn't matter how good of a person you are; it's human nature to be judged and to judge others by the blood they carry and the company they keep.

- The Lies We Tell for Love, Mz. Robinson

Even water carves monuments of stone, so do our thoughts shape our character.

- Hugh B. Brown

Everybody has good and bad forces working with them, against them, and within them.

- Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem, Suzy Kassem

Diversity of character is due to the unequal time given to values. Only through each other will we see the importance of the qualities we lack and our unfinished soul's potential.

- Shannon L. Alder