Character

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense

Our ideals are our better selves

The weak in courage is strong in cunning

I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred - that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt

What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization

All that a man does outwardly is but the expression and completion of his inward thought. To work effectively, he must think clearly; to act nobly, he must think nobly

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others

There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum

Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Character is power

Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.

A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor

It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.

As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before

I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom, one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise

This is something that I cannot get over, that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character