Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach Quotes

Character is long-standing habit.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Good habits are hard to develop but easy to live with; bad habits are easy to develop but hard to live with. The habits you have and the habits that have you will determine almost everything you achieve or fail to achieve.

It is by doing good that we become good.

Being a 'good man' is something you do, not something you are.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat; Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.

There are so many highly esteemed ones who became miserable and humiliated just because of their bad temper and morals; and humble people who have attained eminence and the highest honors because of good temper and morals.

I just want to be as good a person as I can be.

There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.

Watch your habits, they determine your character.

Knowing how bad you could be is a great encouragement to being good.

Character isn't inherited. One builds it daily by how one thinks and acts.

Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.

I've never had any desire to be good. I don't like goodness particularly.

There's no doubt West Point impacted who I am... It has an enormous emphasis, not only on military aspects, but character development. Whether it's the honor code, or the interactions you have, both with the cadet leadership and the academy leadership, every place you are is a character test.

The integrity of men is to be measured by their conduct, not by their professions.

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.

Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.

Men are more accountable for their motives, than for anything else; and primarily, morality consists in the motives, that is in the affections.

I did not use paint, I made myself up morally.

… the field of action is not the field of intellect, it is the field of character; and change or development of character is always slow work.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Growing up a good person, it's a lot harder than you'd think.