Character Quotes

• "Brains and character rule the world. The most distinguished Frenchman of the last century said: "Men succeed less by their talents than their character." There were scores of men a hundred years ago who had more intellect than Washington. He outlives and overrides them all by the influence of his character."
  By: Wendell Phillips
  Character Quotes
• "Grand, gloomy and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his awful orginality."
  By: Charles Phillips, Character of Napoleon I
  Character Quotes
• "Retire within thyself, and thou will discover how small a stock is there. [Lat., Tecum habita, et noris quam sit tibi curta supellex.]"
  By: Persius (Aulus Persius Flaccus), Satires (IV, 52)
  Character Quotes
• "Thou art moist and soft clay; thou must instantly be shaped by the glowing wheel. [Lat., Udum et molle lutum es: nunc, nunc properandus et acri Fingendus sine fine rota.]"
  By: Persius (Aulus Persius Flaccus), Satires (III, 23)
  Character Quotes
• "Every man has at times in his mind the ideal of what he should be, but is not. This ideal may be high and complete, or it may be quite low and insufficient; yet in all men that really seek to improve, it is better than the actual character. . . . Man never falls so low that he can see nothing higher than himself."
  By: Theodore Parker, Critical and Miscellaneous Writings (essay I, A lesson for the Day)
  Character Quotes
• "I see and approve better things, I follow the worse. [Lat., Video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor.]"
  By: Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso), Metamorphoses (VII, 20)
  Character Quotes
• "Character is a perfectly educated will."
  By: Novalis (pseudonym of Frederich Leopold von Hardenberg)
  Character Quotes
• "Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. For the greatest things grow by God's Law out of the smallest. But to live your life you must discipline it. You must not fritter it away in "fair purpose, erring act, inconstant will" but make your thoughts, your acts all work to the same end and that end, not self but God. That is what we call character."
  By: Florence Nightingale
  Character Quotes
• "Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had."
  By: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
  Character Quotes
• "To see the Cause above renown, To love the game beyond the prize, To honour, while you strike him down, The foe that comes with fearless eyes; To count the like of battle good, And dear the land that gave you birth; And dearer yet the brotherhood That binds the brave of all the earth."
  By: Henry John Newboldt, The Island Race--Clifton Chapel
  Character Quotes
• "To those who know thee not, no words can paint; And those who know thee, know all words are faint!"
  By: Hannah More, Sensibility
  Character Quotes
• "Good at a fight, but better at a play; Godlike in giving, but the devil to pay."
  By: Thomas Moore, On a Cast of Sheridan's Hand
  Character Quotes
• "Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people. [Fr., Les hommes, fripons en detail, sont en gros de tres-honnetes gens.]"
  By: Charles de Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat), De l'Esprit (XXV, c. 2)
  Character Quotes
• "Her virtue and the conscience of her worth, That would be wooed, and not unsought be won."
  By: John Milton, Paradise Lost (bk. VIII, l. 502)
  Character Quotes
• "Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons, the fairest of her daughters, Eve."
  By: John Milton, Paradise Lost (bk. IV, l. 323)
  Character Quotes
• "For contemplation he and valor formed, For softness she and sweet attractive grace."
  By: John Milton, Paradise Lost (bk. IV, l. 297)
  Character Quotes