Character quotes

Words about integrity, honesty and who we choose to be.

• My custom is, to read four or five chapters every morning, immediately after rising from my bed. It employs about an hour of my time, and seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day.

• Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union, and it is a contemplation worthy of the most exalted soul whether its total abolition is or is not practicable: if practicable, by what means it may be effected, and if a choice of means be within the scope of the object, what means would accomplish it at the smallest cost of human sufferance.

• The divide of race has been America's constant curse.

• In serving, we recognize a simple but powerful truth: We need each other, and we must care for one another.

• Strong hearts and helpful hands are needed, and, fortunately, we have them in every part of our beloved country.

• Personally, I do not resort to force — not even to the force of law — to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example — of fashion.

• I am not liked as a President by the politicians in office, in the press, or in Congress. But I am content to abide the judgment — the sober second thought — of the people.

• The President of the United States of necessity owes his election to office to the suffrage and zealous labors of a political party, the members of which cherish with ardor and regard as of essential importance the principles of their party organization; but he should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves the country best.

• Anyone who has taken the oath I have just taken must feel a heavy weight of responsibility.

• The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.

• No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.

• The right thing to do never requires any subterfuges, it is always simple and direct.

• …now, more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.

• It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.

• When an election to office shall be the selection by the voters of one of their number to assume for a time a public trust instead of his dedication to the profession of politics; when the holders of the ballot, quickened by a sense of duty, shall avenge truth betrayed and pledges broken, and when the suffrage shall be altogether free and uncorrupted, the full realization of a government by the people will be at hand.

• ...the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.

• I can resist everything except temptation.

• The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

• There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

• Do I contradict myself? / Very well then . . . . I contradict myself; / I am large . . . . I contain multitudes.

• I am the poet of the body, / And I am the poet of the soul.

• I exist as I am, that is enough, / If no other in the world be aware I sit content, / And if each and all be aware I sit content.

• I loafe and invite my soul, / I lean and loafe at my ease . . . . observing a spear of summer grass.

• I celebrate myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

• The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings.

• The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul—our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment—our republican idea, individual citizenship.

• Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.

• The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.

• It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

• Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

• Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word.

• Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.

• Well done is better than well said.

• Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections.

• The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.

• I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.

• LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

• A great man is always willing to be little.

• Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

• Probably the best test of true love of liberty in any country is the way in which minorities are treated in that country. Not only should there be complete liberty in matters of religion and opinion, but complete liberty for each man to lead his life as he desires, provided only that in so doing he does not wrong his neighbor.

• The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be cynic, or fop, or voluptuary.

• There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of the great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder.

• Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into a fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world.

• All sober enquirers after truth, ancient and modern, Pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity consists in virtue.

• The good citizen will demand liberty for himself, and as a matter of pride he will see to it that others receive the liberty which he thus claims as his own.

• …there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the œconomy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity…

• …the foundations of our national policy, will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; and the pre-eminence of free Government, be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its Citizens, and command the respect of the world.

• Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men & citizens.

• The only reward of virtue, is virtue: the only way to have a friend, is to be one.

• Insist on yourself; never imitate.

• To be great is to be misunderstood.

• Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.

• Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

• A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

• There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

• No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

• Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

• Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

• However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.

• I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

• If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

• The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

• ’Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.