Quotes About Character

For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.

The greatest penalty of evildoing - namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

For he who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power, and he who takes up a greater amount; not having deposited it, is wholly unjust.

Modestus said of Regulus that he was "the biggest rascal that walks upon two legs."

Não ignoro que muitos outros não olham estas espécies de desgraças senão como uma simples perda de um bem, e que assim pensando eles se julgam grandes homens e homens sábios. De minha parte, não sei se são tão grandes e tão sábios como o imaginam, mas sei bem que não são homens.

The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.

The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.

Poverty is not dishonourable in itself, but only when it arises from idleness, intemperance, extravagance, and folly.

The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it disposes and eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.

A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.

The fact is that men who know nothing of decency in their own lives are only too ready to launch foul slanders against their betters and to offer them up as victims to the evil deity of popular envy.

Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and gives them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune...

For though all persons are equally subject to the caprice of fortune, yet all good men have one advantage she cannot deny, which is this, to act reasonably under misfortunes.

To make an action honorable, it ought to be agreeable to the age, and other circumstances of the person; since it is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad.

I would rather excel in the knowledge of what is excellent than the extent of my power or possessions.

Demaratus, being asked in a troublesome manner by an importunate fellow, Who was the best man in Lacedaemon? answered at last, 'He, Sir, that is the least like you'.

Even so the more a vicious man denies his vice, the more does it insinuate itself and master him: as those people really poor who pretend to be rich get still more poor from their false display.

They should live all together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence, and the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, their one measure of difference between man and man.

Even those virtues which nature had denied him were imitated by him so successfully that he won more confidence than those who actually possessed them.

The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it…eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.

As Plato says: 'People cannot be good leaders, unless they have first been good servants.