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.
I’m called away by particular business—but I leave my character behind me.
Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.
But what he no longer had was a conscience he could live with.
The greater perfection a soul aspires after, the more dependent it is upon Divine Grace.
One self-approving hour whole years out-weighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas.
The play's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
To gain a reputation for virtue, grieve over those you injure.
Why do we assert that virtue is unteachable, and thus make it non-existent?
That is the true perfection of man to find out his imperfections.