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

Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), Lincoln's Own Stories

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

Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else's traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man's character is, the better it fits him.

Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

Without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety¹, it is impossible for the character to be established.

Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), The Confucian Analects

Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously². This is how character is built.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962), My Day

Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous³ fact lies the peril⁵ and responsibility of our existence.

Elihu Burritt

Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.

Elmer G. Letterman

I am a man of fixed⁶ and unbending principles, the first of which is to flexible at all times.

Everett Mckinley Dirkson

In attempts to improve your character, know what is in your power and what is beyond it.

Francis Thompson (1859 - 1907)

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)

Our character...is an omen⁴ of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.

George Santayana (1863 - 1952), "The German Mind: A Philosophical⁷ Diagnosis⁸"

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

Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)

Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.

Henry Clay (1777 - 1852)

A man's character is his fate.

Heraclitus (540 BC - 480 BC), On the Universe

People with courage and character always seem sinister⁹ to the rest.

Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)

The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character.

Isabelle Eberhardt

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

James A. Froude (1818 - 1894)

How easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous¹⁰ courage to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight¹¹ of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor¹² attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy.

James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, 1826

Character consists of what you do on the third and forth¹³ tries.

James Mechener

When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.

Japanese Proverb

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

Joan Didion (1934 - ), "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"

Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

I take it as a man's duty to restrain himself.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Ethan of Athos, 1986

One can acquire everything in solitude¹⁴ - except character.

Marie Henri Beyle (1783 - 1842)

To succeed is nothing, it's an accident. but to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different: it is character.

Marie Leneru, Oprah Magazine, May 2004

The character of a man is known from his conversations.

Menander (342 BC - 292 BC)

I could never think well of a man's intellectual or moral character, if he was habitually¹⁵ unfaithful to his appointments.

Nathaniel Emmons

The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841 - 1935)