Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

One can easily judge the character of a person by the way they treat people who can do nothing for them. – Proverb

The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don’t know what to do. – John W. Holt, Jr.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Usually, we combine internal and external conflicts for a richer story. That means we have to understand how our characters approach and resolve conflict. – Jami Gold 

Character is not built in men by hiding them from temptation, it is by teaching them to scorn it. – Emmett P. LeCompte

Quotation On Character

Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character. – WALTER LIPPMANN

The way a man plays a game shows some of his character. The way he loses shows all of it. – Author Unknown

Character is simply habit long continued. – Plutarch

The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out. – Thomas B. Macaulay

Great fiction is fueled by bad decisions and human weakness. – Kristen Lamb

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

Reputation is what men and women think of us. Character is what God and the angels know of us. – Thomas Paine

Every thought willingly contemplated, every word meaningly spoken, every action freely done, consolidates itself in the character, and will project itself onward in a permanent continuity. – Henry Giles

Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have life itself. – Walter Anderson

Quotes On Character

Our characters might not be vulnerable to anyone else, but they usually need to allow a bit of vulnerability with the reader so the reader can form a connection with them. – Jami Gold

Characterization requires self-knowledge, insight into human nature . . . it is more than impersonation. – Leon Surmelian

If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny. – André Maurois

Character is an essential tendency. It can be covered up, it can be messed with, it can be screwed around with, but it can’t be ultimately changed. It’s the structure of our bones, the blood that runs through our veins. – SAM SHEPARD

Every man has three characters—that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has. – Alphonse Karr

The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty. – Zig Ziglar

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect. – Bruce Lee

Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth. – Daniel Webster

Goodness is about character – integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people. – Dennis Prager

The key to creating better plots rests in a deeper understanding of character. – Kristen Lamb

Special Character

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another’s. – Jean Paul

Character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self respect springs. – Joan Didion

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.  – Kurt Vonnegut Jr

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost. – Billy Graham

Developing a character with genuine depth requires a focus on not just desire but how the character deals with frustration of her desires, as well as her vulnerabilities, her secrets, and especially her contradictions. This development needs to be forged in scenes, the better to employ your intuition rather than your intellect. – David Corbett

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. – Ralph Waldo Emerson 

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

Good Character Quotes

When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves. – Confucius 

Personality plays a large role in how a characters sounds. Their voice will reflect that personality and color every line of dialog and internal thought. – Janice Hardy

The man who cannot believe in himself cannot believe in anything else. The basis of all integrity and character is whatever faith we have in our own integrity. – Roy L Smith

No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character. – John Morley

Our true character is that person we become when no one is watching. – Unknown

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.

The great hope of society is individual character. – William Ellery Channing

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character. – Albert Einstein

Fear humanizes us. It’s something we all share as a species and an emotion that our characters should share as well—even the bravest and baddest of them all. – Ava Jae

Special Character

Talents are best nurtured in solitude. Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.

Watch your words, for they become actions.

Watch your actions, for they become habits.

Watch your habits, for they become character.

Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny. – Author Unknown

Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honour for me. – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Give your characters a physical action do based upon their emotions. This will look different for every character, just like it looks different for every human. – Casey Herringshaw

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

Quotation On Character 

Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that’s right is to get by, and the only thing that’s wrong is to get caught. – J. C. Watts

Character is a diamond that scratches every other stone. – Cyrus A. Bartol

A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation. – Mark Twain

A character is what he does, yes — but even more, a character is what he means to do. – Orson Scott Card

Every man, as to character, is the creature of the age in which he lives. Very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of their times. – Voltaire

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

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

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. – James A. Froude

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character! – Theodore Roosevelt

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

The thing I do at the beginning is a “voice journal,” a free form doc that is the character speaking to me. I just work on it until I start to hear different from my own, or the other characters. – James Scott Bell

Quotation On Character

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

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids. – Aristotle

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

What a man’s mind can create, man’s character can control. – THOMAS EDISON

To be influential, a character must somehow cement an “If-Then” scenario in our heads. For example: If I eat spinach, then I will be strong. – Therese Walsh

Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming. – Jim Rohn

Let’s face it, characters are the bedrock of your fiction. Plot is just a series of actions that happen in a sequence, and without someone to either perpetrate or suffer the consequences of those actions, you have no one for your reader to root for, or wish bad things on. – Icy Sedgwick

People and characters are made up of their past experiences.When crafting a character, one of the most important aspects we consider is her past. – Skye Fairwin

Character Quotes 

Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence. – Jean Paul

The politics of character tend to drive out the politics of substance. – JUDITH LICHTENBERG

You cannot have an effective protagonist who simply responds to events happening around him or her. Your protagonist must act, not just react. – Rachelle Gardner

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

Character, not circumstance, makes the person. – Booker T. Washington

Character is the result of two things: Mental attitude and the way we spend our time. – Elbert Hubbard

Good Character Quotes

For every fantastical trait or ability a character has, the author has to work harder to make sure the reader still believes in them. If they push it too far, the reader will simply switch off from the character, or even the entire story. – Aaron Miles

If, however, you want to write a character from the ground up, a character who is as real as any person living, yet wholly your own creation, then there are three aspects you need to know in depth: the physical, sociological and psychological. – mooderino

It is our character that supports the promise of our future – far more than particular government programs or policies. – WILLIAM J. BENNETT

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands. – Anne Frank

The people “have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge – I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers.” – JOHN ADAMS

One of the things I suggest (and by suggest I mean strongly advise) my writing circle do is to keep binders for their protagonist and supporting characters (as well as a binder for unused characters). – Jamie Provencher

I think all writers are always collecting characters as we go along. Not just characters of course, we’re collecting EVERYTHING. Bits and pieces of story. An interesting dynamic between people. A theme. A great character back story. A cool occupation. The look of someone’s eyes. A burning ambition. Hundreds of thousands of bits of flotsam and jetsam that we stick in the back of our minds like the shelves full of buttons and ribbons and fabrics and threads and beads in a costumer’s shop. – Alexandra Sokoloff

What all of these characters have in common is the depth of their backstories. They arrive at the beginning of their stories with baggage already in tow. – K. M. Weiland

What characters do must grow out of who they are, and who they are is, in turn, influenced by what you make happen to them. – Nancy Kress

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wing, and only character endures. – HORACE GREELEY

A character with one or more secrets adds mystery and intrigue to any genre. – Linda S. Clare