When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate now knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. -- Henri Nouwen

Look a man in the eye and say what you really think, don't just smile at him and say what you're supposed to think. 

Reputation is what the world sees in you. Character is what you see in yourself. 

False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.

A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world

A true friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be anywhere else. 
With lies you may go ahead in the world, but you can never go back

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

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 


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 

Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it piece by piece-by thought, choice, courage and determination. -- John Luther 

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

Character is not made in a crisis -- it is only exhibited.

The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.