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Quotes about character

276 quotes from 175 people

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If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
Rudyard Kipling1865–1936If— (1910)In context
- Advice
If you can dream⁠—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think⁠—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same
Rudyard Kipling1865–1936If— (1910)In context
- Failure
- Success
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And⁠—which is more⁠—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling1865–1936If— (1910)In context
- Men
- Time
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
W. B. Yeats1865–1939The Second Coming (1920)In context
- Good & Evil
I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts
Lord Byron1788–1824Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–1818), Canto the ThirdIn context
I am not what you call a civilised man! I have done with society entirely, for reasons which I alone have the right of appreciating.
Jules Verne1828–1905Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), Part One, Chapter XIn context
- Freedom
Two souls, alas! reside within my breast,
And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Faust (1808), Scene II, spoken by FaustIn context
- Emotion
A good man, through obscurest aspiration,
Has still an instinct of the one true way.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Faust (1808), Prologue in Heaven, spoken by The LordIn context
- Good & Evil
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man’s a man for a’ that.
Robert Burns1759–1796A Man’s a Man for A’ That (1795)In context
- Money
Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.
Edwin Arlington Robinson1869–1935Miniver Cheevy (1907)In context
I am a sick man…. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881Notes from Underground (1864), Part I: Underground, Chapter IIn context
- Health
“Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.”
Jane Austen1775–1817Sense and Sensibility (1811), Chapter XVIIIn context
There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.
Jane Austen1775–1817Emma (1815), Volume II, Chapter VIIn context
- Love
Even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
Herman Melville1819–1891Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XCVIIn context
There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Macbeth (c. 1606), Act I, Scene IV, spoken by DuncanIn context