Character quotes

Character

14.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

14.8K quotes

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Browse quotes that often appear alongside character — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

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Character quotes (page 125 of 739)

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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Character

"All writing is by the grace of God. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. In these sentences that you show me, I can find no beauty, for I see death in every clause and every word. There is a fossil or a mummy character which pervades this book. The best sepulchers, the vastest catacombs, Thebes and Cairo, Pyramids, are sepulchers to me. I like gardens and nurseries. Give me initiative, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words."

Writing Book Character
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Character

"It is the duty of men to judge men only by their actions. Our faculties furnish us with no means of arriving at the motive, the character, the secret self. We call the tree good from its fruits, and the man, from his works."

Men Mean Character
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Character

"It is always a practical difficulty with clubs to regulate the laws of election so as to exclude peremptorily every social nuisance. Nobody wishes bad manners. We must have loyalty and character."

Character Law Loyalty
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Character

"A state of war or anarchy, in which law has little force, is so far valuable, that it puts every man on trial. The man of principle is known as such, and even in the fury of faction is respected."

Men War Character
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Character

"We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves."

Character Eggs Volcanoes
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Character

"For you, o broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys."

Men Character Money
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Character

"Hence, the less government we have, the better,--the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formalGovernment, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation."

Men Character Wise
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Character

"An expense of ends to means is fate;Morganization tyrannizing over character. The menagerie, or forms and powers of the spine, is a book of fate: the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, determines tyrannically its limits."

Mean Book Character
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Character

"Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends."

Men Character Compromise
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Character

"In our Mechanics' Fair, there must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpenter's planes, and baking troughs, but also some few finer instruments,--rain-gauges, thermometers, and telescopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who note the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the bystander."

Character Rain Bridges
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Character

"Society gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him; he has become tediously good insome particular but negligent or narrow in the rest; and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgusting result."

Men Character Leadership
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Character

"The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, only on its edge; as the chemicalenergy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum."

Character Natural Aristocracy
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