The collection / 6,437 fragments

Character.

Explore passages mentioning character, virtue, honour. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Reviewed editorial meanings may also connect entries to this topic; those assignments are labelled separately from word matching.

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01Undated

This world is nothing except it tend to the next.

Traditional · English / proverb

Meaning: The saying values present life through its relation to a life beyond it. It expresses a religious priority rather than a factual dismissal of worldly relationships and needs.

02Undated

Wounds may heal, but not those made by ill words.

Traditional · English / proverb

Meaning: Cruel words can leave a lasting hurt even after the moment has passed. Think about their effect rather than assuming that speech is harmless because it leaves no visible mark.

03Undated

He who maketh others wretched is himself a wretch, whether prince or peasant.

Traditional · English / proverb

Meaning: Deliberately making others miserable is wrong regardless of rank. The contrast between prince and peasant applies the same moral scrutiny across status.

04Undated

Two wrongs will not make a right.

Traditional · English / proverb

Meaning: Responding to a wrong with another wrong does not make the first one fair or repair it. Accountability should address the harm without repeating it.

05c. 1782 AD

Genuine morality is preserved only in the school of adversity, and a state of continuous prosperity may easily prove a quicksand to virtue.

Schiller / quote

06c. 1593 AD

It is seldom that beautiful persons are otherwise of great virtue.

Francis Bacon / quote

07c. 1695 AD

A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes there is no virtue but on his own side.

Joseph Addison / quote

08c. 1847 AD

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.

Wendell Phillips / quote

09c. 1590 AD

He lives in fame that died in virtue's cause.

William Shakespeare / quote

10c. 1751 AD

Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude; for one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the Giver of all, there are ten thousand who are good only from their apprehension of punishment.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

11c. 1801 AD

Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness; the evil consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor; while the paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.

Sir Walter Scott / quote

12c. 1839 AD

Happiness and virtue react upon each other,—the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.

Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote

13c. 1695 AD

Hypocrisy itself does great honor, or rather justice, to religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an ornament to human nature. The hypocrite would not be at so much pains to put on the appearance of virtue, if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the love and esteem of mankind.

Joseph Addison / quote

14c. 1808 AD

Faith in the hereafter is as necessary for the intellectual as the moral character; and to the man of letters, as well as to the Christian, the present forms but the slightest portion of his existence.

Robert Southey / quote

15c. 1842 AD

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson / quote

16c. 1842 AD

To be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false,—this is the mark and character of intelligence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson / quote

17c. 1790 AD

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.

Goethe / quote

18c. 1641 AD

The end of learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love Him, and to imitate Him, by possessing our souls of true virtue.

John Milton / quote

19c. 1590 AD

Do you know what a man is? Are not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?

William Shakespeare / quote

20c. 1789 AD

To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of virtue.

Hannah More / quote

21c. 1746 AD

Marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship, and there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness that regard which only virtue and piety can claim.

Samuel Johnson / quote

22c. 1773 AD

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

Thomas Paine / quote

23c. 1695 AD

The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty. If we banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.

Joseph Addison / quote

24c. 1765 AD

The art of poetry is to touch the passions, and its duty to lead them on the side of virtue.

William Cowper / quote