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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:

They are our outward consciences.

William Shakespeare Henry V (1599)

A cleere conscience is a sure carde.

John Lyly

Men who can hear the Decalogue and feel
No self-reproach.

William Wordsworth

I do perceive here a divided duty.

William Shakespeare Othello (1603)

So that every man lawfully ordained must bring a bow which hath two strings, a title of present right and another to provide for future possibility or chance.

Richard Hooker

Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.

William Shakespeare

You were bought with a price; stop becoming slaves of men.

Paul of Tarsus

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
Toil on, poor heart, unceasingly;
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A truth and noonday light to thee.

Ellen Sturgis Hooper

What was said of Cinna might well be applied to him. He [Hampden] had a head to contrive, a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute, any mischief.

Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon

If whole in life, and free from sin,
Man needs no Moorish bow, nor dart
Nor quiver, carrying death within
By poison's art.

Horace

Physiognomy is not a guide that has been given us by which to judge of the character of men: it may only serve us for conjecture.

Jean de La Bruyère

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Noam Chomsky The Common Good (1998)

Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,
Nods and Becks and wreathèd Smiles.

John Milton L'Allegro (1631)

An honest man, close-button'd to the chin,
Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within.

William Cowper

O Mrs. Higden, Mrs. Higden, you was a woman and a mother, and a mangler in a million million.

Charles Dickens

Lord of the golden tongue and smiting eyes;
Great out of season and untimely wise:
A man whose virtue, genius, grandeur, worth,
Wrought deadlier ill than ages can undo.

William Watson

Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstacy.

William Shakespeare Macbeth (1605)

Yet still there whispers the small voice within,
Heard through Gain's silence, and o'er Glory's din;
Whatever creed be taught or land be trod,
Man's conscience is the oracle of God.

Lord Byron

Put thou thy trust in God;
In duty's path go on;
Fix on His word thy steadfast eye;
So shall thy work be done.

Martin Luther

Majesty: when a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

George Bernard Shaw

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