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
• "Modern engineers, after having erected a viaduct, insist upon subjecting it to a severe strain by a formal trial trip before allowing it to be opened for public traffic, and it would almost seem that God, in employing moral agents for the carrying out of His purposes, secures that they shall be tested by some dreadful ordeal before He fully commits to them the work which He wishes them to perform."
  By: William Mackergo Taylor
  Character Quotes
• "He whose life seems fair, if all his errors and follies were articled against him, would seem vicious and miserable."
  By: Jeremy Taylor
  Character Quotes
• "Such souls, Whose sudden visitations daze the world, Vanish like lighting, but they leave behind A voice that in the distance far away Wakens the slumbering ages."
  By: Sir Henry Taylor (2), Philip Van Artevelde (pt. I, act I, sc. 7)
  Character Quotes
• "The hearts that dare are quick to feel; The hands that wound are soft to heal."
  By: Bayard Taylor, Soldiers of Peace
  Character Quotes
• "Fame is what you have taken, Character's what you give; When to this truth you waken, Then you begin to live."
  By: Bayard Taylor, Improvisations (st. XI)
  Character Quotes
• "He, full of bashfulness and truth, loved much, hoped little, and desired naught. [Lat., Brama assai, poco speca e nulla chiede.]"
  By: Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme (II, 16)
  Character Quotes
• "A man should endeavor to be as pliant as a reed, yet as hard as cedar-wood."
  By: The Talmud, Babylonian Talmud, Taanith (20)
  Character Quotes
• "In seasons of tumult and discord bad men have most power; mental and moral excellence require peace and quietness. [Lat., In turbas et discordias pessimo cuique plurima vis: pax et quies bonis artibus indigent.]"
  By: Tacitus (Caius Cornelius Tacitus), Annales (IV, 1)
  Character Quotes
• "He possessed simplicity and liberality, qualities which beyond a certain limit lead to ruin. [Lat., Inerat tamen simplicitas ac liberalitas, quae, nisi adsit modus in exitium veruntur.]"
  By: Tacitus (Caius Cornelius Tacitus), Annales (III, 86)
  Character Quotes
• "His own character is the arbiter of every one's fortune."
  By: Syrus (Publilius Syrus), Maxims (286)
  Character Quotes
• "It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of."
  By: Jonathan Swift
  Character Quotes
• "We do not judge men by what they are in themselves, but by what they are relatively to us."
  By: Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine (Soimonoff)
  Character Quotes
• "The true greatness of nations is in those qualities which constitute the greatness of the individual."
  By: Charles Sumner, Oration on the True Grandeur of Nations
  Character Quotes
• "High characters (cries one), and he would see Things that ne'er were, nor are, nor e'er will be."
  By: Sir John Suckling, The Goblin's Epilogue
  Character Quotes
• "It's the bad that's in the best of us Leaves the saint so like the rest of us! It's the good in the darkest-curst of us Redeems and saves the worst of us! It's the muddle of hope and madness; It's the tangle of good and badness; It's the lunacy linked with sanity Makes up, and mocks, humanity!"
  By: Arthur John Arbuthnott Stringer, Humanity
  Character Quotes