30 quotations linked to Character Building by or associated with Booker T. Washington, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Use these links when you want to inspect the wording in its wider work or edition.
“Do your work quietly.”
Useful work does not need constant display; quiet concentration can keep attention on the quality of the task rather than recognition for performing it.
Source note: Character Building, “Some Great Little Things,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington places this instruction among small daily habits of order, quiet, cleanliness, reading and reflection that he treats as important parts of character formation.
“Be regular in all your habits.”
Reliability grows from regular behavior because stable routines make useful conduct less dependent on mood or last-minute pressure.
Source note: Character Building, “Some Great Little Things,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Near the close of the address, Washington urges regular times for study, recreation, sleep, reading and reflection, treating regularity as part of everyday self-discipline.
“Go home and lead a simple life.”
A simpler life can redirect attention toward useful work, family obligations, and sustainable choices instead of maintaining appearances that create pressure.
Source note: Character Building, “Last Words,” Project Gutenberg #60484. In the closing address, Washington warns departing students not to feel superior to their families after schooling and then tells them to go home, live simply, help their parents and practise politeness.
“The thing for you to do is to fight it out.”
Difficulty is answered with continued effort rather than self-pity, while the surrounding advice remains focused on practical persistence rather than bravado.
Source note: Character Building, “The Cultivation of Stable Habits,” Project Gutenberg #60484. After describing two Tuskegee graduates who finished what they undertook, Washington tells students to “fight it out” and stick to their course despite discouragement and material difficulty.
“Get into the habit of being orderly and neat.”
Order is treated as trainable behavior that reduces avoidable friction and supports reliability in work, study, and shared environments.
Source note: Character Building, “Some Great Little Things,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington tells students to make order and neatness habitual in crowded rooms, immediately before his advice to work and close doors quietly.
“Grow into the habit of talking about the bright side of life.”
Washington presents constructive speech as a cultivated habit rather than an automatic temperament, while the surrounding lecture still acknowledges life’s darker side.
Source note: Character Building, “Two Sides of Life,” Project Gutenberg #60484. The advice belongs to a longer argument against habitual discouraging talk.
“how anxious they are that your school life here will not be successful.”
Washington asks students to imagine the concern carried by people close to them, turning family anxiety into a reason to take school responsibilities seriously.
Source note: Character Building, “Growth,” Project Gutenberg #60484. The line sits inside a longer appeal to remember parents and others invested in the student’s success.
“No matter what the thing is, put your conscience into it; do your best.”
Work gains moral weight when effort and conscience remain present even in tasks that seem small, routine, or unlikely to attract praise.
Source note: Character Building, “What Is To Be Our Future?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington asks whether Tuskegee will remain worthy of public confidence and answers by requiring each student and worker to put conscience and full effort into every kind of work.
“those who have done the most for you, those who have stood by you most closely.”
The phrase directs attention toward the people whose sustained presence and help deserve to be remembered when evaluating one’s own conduct.
Source note: Character Building, “Have You Done Your Best?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington is asking students to imagine answering to parents or their nearest and dearest friends.
“Whatever I have done I have honestly endeavored to do to the best of my ability.”
Honesty and effort are joined in a self-assessment standard based on doing the best one can, rather than on appearance or outside praise.
Source note: Character Building, “What Is To Be Our Future?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. This sentence completes Washington’s model declaration about conscientious study and work.
“Education is meant to make us appreciate the things that are beautiful in nature.”
Learning should enlarge perception as well as employability, helping a person notice value and beauty that might otherwise pass without attention.
Source note: Character Building, “The Highest Education,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington places appreciation of beauty in nature alongside truth, justice, generosity and service as outcomes of education; this sentence belongs to the later address identified here rather than the earlier education address.
“place yourselves in the presence of those who stand by and support this institution”
Remembering the people who support an institution becomes a test of accountability, encouraging students to connect present opportunity with obligations to a wider community.
Source note: Character Building, “Have You Done Your Best?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. The excerpt is part of Washington’s invitation to review the school year honestly.
“I have put my whole soul into my study, into my work, into whatever I have attempted.”
The model statement asks a student to be able to say that study and work received full engagement rather than minimal compliance.
Source note: Character Building, “What Is To Be Our Future?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington offers the sentence as a standard students should be able to affirm about their own effort.
“those who are near and dear to you, those who have done more for you than anybody else”
The address explicitly centers people who have given sustained help, making awareness of that support part of the motivation for continued growth.
Source note: Character Building, “Growth,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington uses the phrase while urging students to make the coming year their best.
“Call the attention of your near neighbour at the table to the excellence of the coffee.”
The deliberately ordinary example turns gratitude into a social habit: notice what is good and make that appreciation visible to another person.
Source note: Character Building, “Two Sides of Life,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington contrasts excellent coffee with poor rolls as a small exercise in selective attention.
“The more you do to make somebody else happy, the more happiness will you receive in turn.”
Happiness is tied to outward service in Washington’s address, with care for another person treated as a source of meaning rather than a purely private feeling.
Source note: Character Building, “Helping Others,” Project Gutenberg #60484. This is Washington’s moral counsel to students, not a guaranteed psychological formula.
“we must be as reliable and as responsible as it is possible for the people of any other race to be.”
Washington makes reliability and responsibility central to the institutional and racial-uplift argument of the address, tying opportunity to dependable conduct.
Source note: Character Building, “The Importance of Being Reliable,” Project Gutenberg #60484. The race language belongs to Washington’s historical response to discriminatory judgments and employment conditions.
“puts his whole conscience into that work, and does it just as thoroughly as it is possible for him to do it.”
Conscience is applied to ordinary manual work, making thoroughness a matter of character even when the task is mortar-mixing or bricklaying.
Source note: Character Building, “The Virtue of Simplicity,” Project Gutenberg #60484. The sentence refers specifically to students doing building work at Tuskegee.
“you are going to put into this year the hardest and the most earnest work that you have ever done in your life”
Washington turns a broad desire for growth into a concrete commitment to more earnest effort over the coming year.
Source note: Character Building, “Growth,” Project Gutenberg #60484. The line is part of an exhortation to Tuskegee students at the beginning of a new period of study.
“The highly educated person is the one who is the most considerate of those individuals who are less fortunate.”
Education is measured partly by consideration for other people, making social responsibility a test of learning rather than a separate accomplishment.
Source note: Character Building, “The Highest Education,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington defines education broadly enough to include considerate treatment of people facing poverty, disability or other misfortune; this sentence appears in that address’s discussion of gentleness and sympathy.
“Can we so educate a group of students that there will be in every one of them a conscience on which we can depend.”
The educational question shifts attention from acquiring information to developing dependable moral judgment, which Washington treats as a central test of character formation.
Source note: Character Building, “Each One His Part,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington asks whether Tuskegee can educate an individual conscience that performs small duties thoroughly even when no audience is watching; the question closes that address’s argument about conscientious responsibility.
“begin to-morrow morning, every boy and girl, to be reliable and to keep at it until reliability becomes a part of you.”
Reliability is treated as a habit built by repeated dependable action, not a trait someone either permanently has or lacks.
Source note: Character Building, “Keeping Your Word,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington directs the advice to Tuskegee students in the context of promptness and keeping commitments.
“unless all this training of head and hand is based upon high, upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing.”
Knowledge and practical skill are not sufficient in Washington’s educational ideal unless they are joined to the character with which those abilities are used.
Source note: Character Building, “What Would Father and Mother Say?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. This is Washington’s normative theory of education and character, not a modern educational outcome study.
“It does not pay an individual to do anything except what his conscience will approve of every day, and every hour and minute in the day.”
Washington makes conscience a recurring test of conduct, asking whether ordinary choices can withstand one’s own moral approval rather than merely outside scrutiny.
Source note: Character Building, “What Will Pay?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington reports a discussion of honesty in business and uses conscience as a practical test of conduct; the sentence belongs to that address’s argument that dishonest dealing does not pay.
“those who are most useful in every way—are those who are constantly seeing and appreciating the bright side as well as the dark side of life.”
Washington links usefulness with a trained ability to recognize encouraging features without denying the darker side of experience.
Source note: Character Building, “Two Sides of Life,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington explicitly warns just before this passage against going too far toward either the bright or dark side.
“If you want to be happy, if you want to live a contented life, if you want to live a life of genuine pleasure, do something for somebody else.”
The address directs attention away from self-absorption and toward concrete help for another person as Washington’s preferred route to a more contented life.
Source note: Character Building, “Helping Others,” Project Gutenberg #60484. The statement is moral advice inside a school address and is not presented as clinical treatment for unhappiness.
“he must do it just as well as he can, and then, to-morrow, must do it still better than he did it to-day, and the next week better than he did it this week.”
Improvement is framed as repeated refinement of the same work over days and weeks rather than a one-time display of effort.
Source note: Character Building, “The Virtue of Simplicity,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington uses mortar-mixing as a concrete example of progressive workmanship.
“each morning will find you in the recitation rooms with your lessons more thoroughly and more conscientiously prepared for the day’s work than they were for the work of the day before.”
Daily preparation is used as a measurable form of growth: each day’s work should become more thorough and conscientious than the last.
Source note: Character Building, “Growth,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington is speaking specifically about students preparing lessons and cultivating disciplined study habits.
“the one who has schooled himself to see the brighter side of life, the beautiful things in life, will speak of the beauties that are in the rain drops, and the freshness of the newly bathed flowers, shrubs and trees.”
Attention to a rainy morning becomes a concrete example of trained appreciation: the same conditions can include beauty and freshness as well as inconvenience.
Source note: Character Building, “Two Sides of Life,” Project Gutenberg #60484. This is an illustrative scene about perspective, not a claim that difficult conditions should always be reframed positively.
“Have you been really honest with your parents, who have struggled, who have sacrificed, who have toiled for years, in ways you do not know of, in order that you might come here, and in order that you might remain here?”
Washington asks students to measure their own effort against sacrifices made by parents, making gratitude inseparable from honest responsibility for the opportunity received.
Source note: Character Building, “Have You Done Your Best?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. The question is addressed to Tuskegee students reflecting on family sacrifice and their school work.