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.
Heroic, stoic Cato, the sententious,
Who lent his lady to his friend Hortensius.
With too much Quickness ever to be taught;
With too much Thinking to have common Thought.
Though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I something in me dangerous.
Two souls, alas! reside within my breast, and each withdraws from and repels its brother.
I thought the remnant of mine age
Should have been cherish'd by her child-like duty.
Knowledge is the hill which few may wish to climb;
Duty is the path that all may tread.