Quotes about Character

Integrity includes but goes beyond honesty.

If there isn't deep integrity and fundamental character strength, the challenges of life will cause true motives to surface and human relationship failure will replace short-term success.

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

literature in the first 150 years or so focused on what could be called the Character Ethic as the foundation of success—things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule.

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.

Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil—the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life.

There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living.

One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole."2

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.

Listening involves patience, openness, and the desire to understand—highly developed qualities of character. It's so much easier to operate from a low emotional level and to give high-level advice.

The place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our circle of influence, our own character.2 As we become independent—proactive, centered in correct principles, value-driven, and able to organize and execute around the priorities in our life with integrity—we can choose to become interdependent: capable of building rich, enduring, productive relationships with other people.

Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people.