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Character Quotes

Anyone else on this page has about a third as many entries as Shakespeare. Next come Pope, Milton, James Russell Lowell and Goethe. The sentence worth reading in context is Emerson’s, from The American Scholar (1837): character is higher than intellect, and a great soul will be strong to live as well as strong to think.

Shaw, in Man and Superman (1903), is here for a remark about marriage and morality, which shows how loosely the page’s topic is applied.

Three entries are flagged. Two sayings credited to the Roman mime-writer Publilius Syrus, one about character deciding every man’s fortune and one about doing nothing at once both hastily and prudently, are disputed. A passage credited to Joseph Addison, about imperfection being what complains of the imperfect, is marked misattributed.

Random quote on Character

Most quoted on character:

Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

Étienne de La Boétie Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error.

George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman (1903)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.

Horace Mann Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1867)

We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality.

Nikolai Berdyaev Political Testament (1949)

The wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him.

Aristotle

A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible.

George Orwell The Prevention of Literature (1946)

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

Herbert Spencer Social Statics (1851)

To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.

John Locke

Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.

John Locke Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.

William Hazlitt

My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.

Elizabeth Taylor The Seven Deadly Sins (2000)

Perfection is a costly flower and is cultured only by an uncompromising, strict husbandry.

Burton Rascoe Introduction to Chivalry (1921)

The fear of some divine and supreme powers keeps men in obedience.

Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

Endurance is the crowning quality,
And patience all the passion of great hearts.

James Russell Lowell Poems: Second Series (1848)

Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;
Patient of toil, serene amidst alarms;
Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms.

James Beattie The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.

Diogenes of Sinope

It is not the profession of religion which creates the obligation for the performance of duty; for that existed before any such profession was made. The profession of religion only recognises the obligation.

Albert Barnes Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

A difficult form of virtue is to try in your own life to obey what you believe to be God's will.

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

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