Character Quotes

• "Character is what nature has engraven in us; can we then efface it?"
  By: Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire)
  Character Quotes
• "They attack this one man with their hate and their shower of weapons. But he is like some rock which stretches into the vast sea and which, exposed to the fury of the winds and beaten against by the waves, endures all the violence and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved. [Lat., Uni odiisque viro telisque frequentibus instant. Ille velut rupes vastum quae prodit in aequor, Obvia ventorum furiis, expostaque ponto, Vim cunctam atque minas perfert coelique marisque, Ipsa immota manens.]"
  By: Virgil or Vergil (Publius Virgilius Maro Vergil), The Aeneid (X, 692)
  Character Quotes
• "Learn now of the treachery of the Greeks, and from one example the character of the nation may be known. [Lat., Accipe nunc Danaum insidias, et crimine ab uno Disce omnes.]"
  By: Virgil or Vergil (Publius Virgilius Maro Vergil), The Aeneid (II, 65)
  Character Quotes
• "None but himself can be his parallel. [Lat., Quantum instar in ipso est.]"
  By: Virgil or Vergil (Publius Virgilius Maro Vergil), referring to Caesar, (also found in "The Double Falsehood" by Lewis Theobald)
  Character Quotes
• "There are beauties of character which, like the night-blooming cereus, are closed against the glare and turbulence of every-day life, and bloom only in shade and solitude, and beneath the quiet stars."
  By: Henry Theodore Tuckerman
  Character Quotes
• "It is amusing to detect character in the vocabulary of each person. The adjectives habitually used, like the inscriptions on a thermometer, indicate the temperament."
  By: Henry Theodore Tuckerman
  Character Quotes
• "Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed A fairer spirit, or more welcome shade."
  By: Thomas Tickell, On the Death of Mr. Addison (l. 45)
  Character Quotes
• "Just men, by whom impartial laws were given, And saints, who taught and led the way to heaven!"
  By: Thomas Tickell, On the Death of Mr. Addison (l. 41)
  Character Quotes
• "We are not that we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for that we are capable of being."
  By: Henry David Thoreau
  Character Quotes
• "Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them."
  By: Henry David Thoreau
  Character Quotes
• "Whoe'er amidst the sons Of reason, valor, liberty and virtue, Displays distinguished merit, is a noble Of Nature's own creating."
  By: James Thomson (1), Coriolanus (act III, sc. 3)
  Character Quotes
• "And one man is as good as another--and a great dale betther, as the Irish philosopher said."
  By: William Makepeace Thackeray, Roundabout Papers--On Ribbons
  Character Quotes
• "As nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own, too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches!"
  By: William Makepeace Thackeray
  Character Quotes
• "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control."
  By: Lord Alfred Tennyson, Oenone
  Character Quotes
• "He makes no friend who never made a foe."
  By: Lord Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King--Launcelot and Elaine (l. 1109)
  Character Quotes
• "The best rules to form a young man are to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it."
  By: Sir William Temple
  Character Quotes