The highest type of character is that which is made up of feelings so luminous that the man takes a more elevated path than he could ever do if he were bound down to rules and precedents. 646 Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts. There is no such sculpture as that of character. Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very small experience provided he has a very large heart. 648 Bulwer-Lytton: What Will He Do With It? Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man. 649 Burke: Letters on a Regicide Peace. Letter II., 1796. Greatness of character is a communicable attribute. It has nothing exclusive in its nature. It cannot be the monopoly of an individual, for it is the enlarged and generous action of faculties and affections which enter into and constitute all minds, I mean reason, conscience, and love, - SO that its elements exist in all. 650 William Ellery Channing: Works. The Imitableness of Christ's Character. 651 Character must be kept bright, as well as clean. London, The character of a brave and resolute man is not to be ruffled with adversity. 652 Cicero: Offices. Bk. i. (Edmonds, A character is an assemblage of qualities. 653 Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield): Coningsby. Sublimity of character must come from sublimity of motive. 654 Mary Moody Emerson: Quoted in Holmes's Life of Emerson, Introduction. (American Men of Letters.) Character gives splendor to youth and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs. 655 Emerson: Conduct of Life. Beauty. Character is always known. 656 Emerson: Miscellanies. Address, Divinity College, Cambridge, July 15, 1838. CHARACTER. Character is higher than intellect. be strong to live, as well as to think. 657 Emerson: Miscellanies. The American Scholar. Character is the centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset. 658 Emerson Essays. Character. Character is the habit of action from the permanent vision domesticates of truth. It carries a superiority to all the accidents of life. It compels right relation to every other man, itself with strangers and enemies. 659 Emerson Character. Essays. Men imagine that they Character teaches above our wills. communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. Emerson Essays. Self-Reliance. 660 Heaven sometimes hedges a rare character about with ungainliness and odium, as the burr that protects the fruit. Emerson: Conduct of Life. Culture. 661 Every one of us, whatever our speculative opinions, knows better than he practises, and recognizes a better law than he obeys. 662 cause, Froude: Short Studies on Great Subjects. On Character is the chief element, for it is both a result and a Character is the chief element, for it is both a result and a Garfield: The Works of James Abram Garfield. Address, Hiram College, Hiram, O., June 22, 1876. Almeda A. Booth: her Life and Character. Character.. is the result of two great forces: the initial force which the Creator gave it when he called the man into being, and the force of all the external influence and culture that mould and modify the development of a life. 665 Garfield: The Works of James Abram Garfield. Not a man of iron, but of live oak. 666 Garfield: The Works of James Abram Garfield. Oration, Cleveland, O., Nov. 25, 1870. On Gen. George H. Thomas. To be capable of steady friendship and lasting love, are the two greatest proofs not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind. 667 Hazlitt: Characteristics. No. 235. Character is the result of a system of stereotyped prin ciples. 668 Heine: Wit, Wisdom, and Pathos. On Poland. Character is a great word, one of the greatest. 669 Roswell D. Hitchcock: Eternal Atonement. XVII. Charge to a Pastor. Life is continually weighing us in very sensitive scales, and telling every one of us precisely what his real weight is to the last grain of dust. 670 Lowell: My Study Windows. On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners. The character itself should be, to the individual, a paramount end, simply because the existence of this ideal nobleness of character, or of a near approach to it, in any abundance, would go farther than all things else toward making human life happy, both in the comparatively humble sense of pleasure and freedom from pain, and in the higher meaning of rendering life not what it now is almost universally, puerile and insignificant, but such as human beings with highly developed faculties can care to have. 671 John Stuart Mill: System of Logic. Of the Logic of Practice, or Art. Bk. vi. Ch. 12. The middle of life is the testing-ground of character and strength. There are many who hold a foremost place in the heat of youth, but sink behind when that first energy is played out; and there are many whose follies happily die, and whose true strength is only known when serious existence with its weights and responsibilities comes upon them. Many are the revelations of this sober age. 672 Mrs. Oliphant: Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Ch. 5. (English Men of Letters.) Character cannot be constructed. It cannot be put together. It needs first of all a principle that is animated, and one, therefore, that is animating. It wants an impulse more glowing, determined, and passionate than anything we are possessed of naturally. 673 Charles H. Parkhurst: Sermons. II. Human Spirit and Divine Inspiration. Character is impulse that has been reined down into steady continuance. 674 Charles H. Parkhurst: Sermons. VI. Methodical Piety. It is a great, stalwart soul that qualifies a man to think great, stalwart thoughts; and if you have not such a soul, come as close as you can to a man who has, and you will become richer without his being made poorer. 675 Charles H. Parkhurst: Sermons. III. Coming to the Truth. The most perfect and best of all characters, in my estimation, is his who is as ready to pardon the moral errors of mankind as if he were every day guilty of some himself, and at the same time as cautious of committing a fault as if he never forgave one. 676 Pliny the Younger: Letters. Bk. viii. Letter 22. To Geminus. (Melmoth and Bosanquet, Translators.) Character is the governing element in life, and is above genius. 677 Frederick Saunders: Stray Leaves of Literature. Moral beauty comprehends two distinct elements equally beautiful, justice and charity. 678 Schiller Essays, Esthetical and Philosophical. Introduction. (Bohn edition.) I'm called away by particular business, but I leave my character behind me. 679 Sheridan: The School for Scandal. Act ii. Sc. 2. Character is property. 680 Samuel Smiles: Character. Ch. 1. A man without character and a type of thought of his own, may appear to be many things but in reality is little more than nothing. 681 John Sterling: Essays and Tales. On Montaigne. Critical Essays. In the stormy current of life, characters are weights or floats which at one time make us glide along the bottom, and at another maintain us on the surface. 682 Taine: The Ideal in Art. Sec. ii. 1. Character is a thing that will take care of itself; and all character that does not take care of itself is either very weak or utterly fictitious. 683 Timothy Titcomb (J. G. Holland): Gold-Foil. Firmness, steadiness of principle, a just moderation, and unconquerable perseverance are the virtues the practice of which is most likely to correct whatever is wrong in the constitution of the social system. 684 Daniel Webster: Miscellaneous Letters. To Citizens of Newburyport, Mass., May 15, 1850. A good man's character is the world's common legacy. A great character greatly successful, shining in its righteous eminence and irradiating a beneficent grace, implies the divine element and the celestial future of mankind. 686 William Winter: Stage Life of Mary Anderson. Fate is character. 687 William Winter: The Stage Life of Mary Anderson. Pauline. It is of little traits that the greatest human character is composed. 688 CHARITY William Winter: English Rambles. Pt. ii. Ch. 2. Charity is a virtue of the heart and not of the hands. No. 166. The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess, neither can angel or man come in danger by it. 690 Bacon Essays. Goodness. Never let your zeal outrun your charity; the former is but human, the latter is divine. 691 Hosea Ballou: MSS. Sermon. This I think charity, to love God for himself, and our neighbor for God. 692 Sir Thomas Browne: Religio Medici. Pt. ii. Sec. 14. Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable. 693 Colton: Lacon. Some readily find out that where there is distress there is vice, and easily discover the crime of feeding the lazy or encouraging the dissolute. To promote vice is certainly unlawful; but we do not always encourage vice when we relieve the vicious. 694 Johnson: Works. IX. 393. (Oxford edition, 1825.) True charity arises from faith in the promises of God, and expects rewards only in a future state. To hope for our recompense in this life is not beneficence but usury. 695 Johnson: Works. IX. 322. (Oxford edition, 1825.) Charity draws down a blessing on the charitable. 696 Le Sage: Gil Blas. Bk. i. Ch. 17. (Smollett, Trans.) |