These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not for the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is […]
Character Quotes
Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously […]
The circumstances amid which you live determine your reputation; the truth you believe determines your character. Reputation is what you are supposed to be; character is what you are. Reputation is the photograph; character is the face. Reputation is built in a moment; character is built in a lifetime. Reputation grows like a mushroom; character […]
The people have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge – I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers.
Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.
Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself.
In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow, Thour’t such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow, hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee, there is no living with thee, nor without thee.
There is never a better measure of what a person is than what he does when he is absolutely free to choose.
Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for everyone thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even that those who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.
It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.
