I'm called away by particular business. But I leave my character behind me.
Messieurs, nous avons un maître, ce jeune homme fait tout, peut tout, et veut tout.
Gentlemen, we have a master; this young man does everything, can do everything and will do everything.
It is energy—the central element of which is will—that produces the miracles of enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is the main-spring of what is called force of character, and the sustaining power of all great action.
Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait.
Daniel Webster struck me much like a steam engine in trousers.
He [Macaulay] is like a book in breeches.
There is no man suddenly either excellently good or extremely evil.
A bold bad man!
Worth, courage, honor, these indeed
Your sustenance and birthright are.
Yet though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; and to love her is a liberal education.
It's the bad that's in the best of us
Leaves the saint so like the rest of us!
It's the good in the darkest-curst of us
Redeems and saves the worst of us!
It's the muddle of hope and madness;
It's the tangle of good and badness;
It's the lunacy linked with sanity
Makes up, and mocks, humanity!
High characters (cries one), and he would see
Things that ne'er were, nor are, nor e'er will be.
The true greatness of nations is in those qualities which constitute the greatness of the individual.
His own character is the arbiter of every one's fortune.
Inerat tamen simplicitas ac liberalitas, quæ,
nisi adsit modus in exitium vertuntur.
He possessed simplicity and liberality, qualities which beyond a certain limit lead to ruin.
In turbas et discordias pessimo cuique plurima
vis: pax et quies bonis artibus indigent.
In seasons of tumult and discord bad men have most power; mental and moral excellence require peace and quietness.
A man should endeavor to be as pliant as a reed, yet as hard as cedar-wood.
Brama assai, poco spera e nulla chiede.
He, full of bashfulness and truth, loved much, hoped little, and desired naught.
Fame is what you have taken,
Character's what you give;
When to this truth you waken,
Then you begin to live.
The hearts that dare are quick to feel;
The hands that wound are soft to heal.
Such souls,
Whose sudden visitations daze the world,
Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages.
He makes no friend who never made a foe.
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control.
And one man is as good as another—and a great dale betther, as the Irish philosopher said.
None but himself can be his parallel.
