7 quotes
Even in social life, it is persistency which attracts confidence more than talents and accomplishments.
Character and Characteristic Men (1866)
Character is the spiritual body of the person, and represents the individualization of vital experience, the conversion of unconscious things into self-conscious men.
Character and Characteristic Men (1866)
The universal line of distinction between the strong and the weak is, that one persists; the other hesitates, falters, trifles, and at last collapses or "caves in."
Character and Characteristic Men (1866)
The eye observes only what the mind, the heart, and the imagination are gifted to see; and sight must be reinforced by insight before souls can be discerned as well as manners, ideas as well as objects, realities and relations as well as appearances and accidental connections.
Character and Characteristic Men (1866)
A clear objective perception of facts, and the laws and principles which inhere in facts, is a moral, no less than a mental quality. It implies a purification of the character from egotism and pride of opinion, a rare union of humility of feeling with audacity of thought, and, above all, the triumph of a sincere love of objective truth over the desire to exalt a subjective self.
Character and Characteristic Men (1866)
The strife of politics tends to unsettle the calmest understanding, and ulcerate the most benevolent heart. There are no absurdities or bigotries too gross for parties to create or adopt under the stimulus of political passions. The path of all great statesmen lies between two opposing insanities.
Character and Characteristic Men (1866)
Heroism is no extempore work of transient impulse,—a rocket rushing fretfully up to disturb the darkness by which, after a moment's insulting radiance, it is ruthlessly swallowed up,—but a steady fire, which darts forth tongues of flame. It is no sparkling epigram of action, but a luminous epic of character.
Character and Characteristic Men (1866)