The first rule of achieving goodness is this: think only about self-perfection.
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.
The perfection of a clock is not to go fast, but to be accurate.
Virtue and vice had boundaries in old time,
Not to be pass'd.
Sensitive, swift to resent, but as swift in atoning for error.
Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His sons, the fairest of her daughters, Eve.
There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
But he whose inborn worth his acts commend,
Of gentle soul, to human race a friend.
He is truly great that is little in himself, and that maketh no account of any height of honors.
A bad conscience does not necessarily signify a bad character.
'Tis a blushing shamefast spirit that mutinies in a man's bosom; it fills one full of obstacles.
Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called Conscience.