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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:

The inevitable hypocrisy, which is associated with the all the collective activities of the human race, springs chiefly from this source: that individuals have a moral code which makes the actions of collective man an outrage to their conscience.

Reinhold Niebuhr Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932)

Then on! then on! where duty leads,
My course be onward still.

Reginald Heber

The bliss of the elect in heaven would not be perfect unless they were able to look across the abyss and enjoy the agonies of their brethren in eternal fire.

Pope Gregory I

None but himself can be his parallel.

Lewis Theobald Double Falsehood; or The Distrest Lovers (1727)

Character is what you are in the dark.

Dwight L. Moody

One last thought: perhaps our universe is perfect.

Rudy Rucker The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul (2016)

Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.

Vincent van Gogh Dear Theo: the Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh (1995)

A demd damp, moist, unpleasant body.

Charles Dickens

What a frosty-spirited rogue is this!

William Shakespeare

What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think, and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure — as a mere automaton of “duty.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

I am no proud Jack, like Falstaff; but a
Corinthian, glad of mettle, a good boy.

William Shakespeare

I grant him bloody,
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
That has a name.

William Shakespeare Macbeth (1605)

The man who consecrates his hours
By vig'rous effort and an honest aim,
At once he draws the sting of life and death;
He walks with nature and her paths are peace.

Edward Young

With more capacity for love than earth
Bestows on most of mortal mould and birth,
His early dreams of good out-stripp'd the truth,
And troubled manhood follow'd baffled youth.

Lord Byron

Plain without pomp, and rich without a show.

John Dryden

To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.

William Ewart Gladstone

Our Pilgrim stock wuz pethed with hardihood.

James Russell Lowell

It is of the utmost importance that a nation should have a correct standard by which to weigh the character of its rulers.

John Russell, 1st Earl Russell

The true greatness of nations is in those qualities which constitute the greatness of the individual.

Charles Sumner

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you, and were helped by you, will remember you when forget-me-nots are withered. Carve your name on hearts, 'and not on marble.

Charles Spurgeon

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