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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:

We do speak a wisdom among the mature, but not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.

Paul of Tarsus

All arts his own, the hungry Greekling counts;
And bid him mount the skies, the skies he mounts.

Juvenal

All sciences a fasting Monsieur knows;
And bid him go to hell—to hell he goes.

Juvenal

The materials of the first temple were made ready in solitude. Those of the last also must be shaped in retirement; in the silence of the heart; in the quietness of home; in the practice of unostentatious duty.

Henry Giles Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

Voltaire

No man's defects sought they to know;
So never made themselves a foe.
No man's good deeds did they commend;
So never rais'd themselves a friend.

Matthew Prior

Son of Heav'n and Earth,
Attend! That thou art happy, owe to God;
That thou continuest such, owe to thyself,
That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.

John Milton

In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
Thou 'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,
Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.

Joseph Addison The Spectator (1711)

Hannibal, as he had mighty virtues, so had he many vices; he had two distinct persons in him.

Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is.

Oscar Wilde

Whatever comes from the brain carries the hue of the place it came from, and whatever comes from the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859)

From loveless youth to unrespected age,
No passion gratified, except her rage,
So much the fury still outran the wit,
That pleasure miss'd her, and the scandal hit.

Alexander Pope

He wants wit that wants resolved will.

William Shakespeare

I know their tricks and their manners.

Charles Dickens

All that hath been majestical
In life or death, since time began,
Is native in the simple heart of all,
The angel heart of man.

James Russell Lowell

And, but herself, admits no parallel.

Philip Massinger

So much his courage and his mercy strive,
He wounds to cure, and conquers to forgive.

Matthew Prior

Yet though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; and to love her is a liberal education.

Richard Steele

The still small voice is wanted.

William Cowper The Task (1785)

Now conscience wakes despair
That slumber'd, wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue!

John Milton

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