Quotes about character
276 quotes from 175 people
The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847), Part II, section 1.When the fight begins within himself,
A man’s worth something.
Robert Browning1812–1889Men and Women (1855), “Bishop Blougram’s Apology”, line 693.The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881The Hero as ProphetSelfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)In every man’s writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Goethe (1828).It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.
Aeschylus525–456 BCFragment 394 (222 Smyth), from an unidentified play. Included in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).What we do belongs to what we are; and what we are is what becomes of us.
Henry van Dyke1852–1933Ships and Havens, ch. 2 (1898).Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild;
In Wit, a Man; Simplicity, a Child.
Alexander Pope1688–1744“Epitaph on Gay” (1733), lines 1-2. Reported in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, sixth edition (Yale University Press, 1970), p. 818One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
William Hazlitt1778–1830Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld’s Maxims (1823), No. 162He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Representative Men (1850)All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
Edmund Burke1729–1797Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796), No. 1, volume v, p. 286All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900“The Portrait of Mr. W. H.”, Blackwood’s Magazine (July 1889)Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) (20 September 1773)The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress.
Confucius551–479 BCAnalects, Chapter VII, § 36