73 verified quotes from 37 writers, c. 475 BC to 1923.
Quotes 1 to 25 of 73, page 1 of 3.
What makes a person who they are? The writers here keep returning to the same answer: not birth, luck or reputation, but the habits of thought and the small choices nobody else sees. Marcus Aurelius tells himself to stop describing a good man and be one; Emerson spends a whole essay, Self-Reliance, arguing that you should trust your own judgement over the crowd’s.
Novelists come at it through people. Dickens, Austen, Burnett and Montgomery put these lines in the mouths of characters under pressure, which is where character shows. Every quote below was found word for word in the edition we link, with the speaker named when the words belong to one.
What “verified” means, and what we leave out: How we verify.
…when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves
Our note: The second half of a saying whose first half says we should try to equal people of worth.
Verified in the full text of The Analects on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3330
The commander of the forces of a large state may be carried off, but the will of even a common man cannot be taken from him
Our note: A saying on the one thing that force cannot seize.
Verified in the full text of The Analects on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3330
When the year becomes cold, then we know how the pine and the cypress are the last to lose their leaves
Our note: Hard times, like winter, show which people keep their green.
Verified in the full text of The Analects on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3330
…not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul
Our note: What Socrates says he spent his life urging on his neighbours.
Verified in the full text of Apology on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1656
…we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to any one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him
Our note: Socrates in his cell, arguing with his friend Crito about how to answer wrong.
Verified in the full text of Crito on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1657
Remember that it is not he who reviles you or strikes you, who insults you, but it is your opinion about these things as being insulting
Our note: One of the handbook's central ideas: it is our judgement of an event that hurts us.
Verified in the full text of The Encheiridion on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #10661 · Collected in A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion
Immediately prescribe some character and some form to yourself, which you shall observe both when you are alone and when you meet with men.
Our note: A rule of conduct that should hold the same whether or not anyone is watching.
Verified in the full text of The Encheiridion on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #10661 · Collected in A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.
Our note: Book II opens with this reminder; he goes on to say such people act from ignorance, and he will not be angry with them.
Verified in the full text of Meditations on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #15877 · Collected in The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.
Our note: Book X, a note to himself to stop theorising and act.
Verified in the full text of Meditations on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #15877 · Collected in The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like [the wrong-doer].
Our note: Book VI.
Verified in the full text of Meditations on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #15877 · Collected in The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
Our note: Book V, on how repeated thoughts shape who we are.
Verified in the full text of Meditations on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #15877 · Collected in The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.
Our note: Book IV.
Verified in the full text of Meditations on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #15877 · Collected in The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only to what he does himself, that it may be just and pure
Our note: Book IV.
Verified in the full text of Meditations on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #15877 · Collected in The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
I have no more made my book than my book has made me
Our note: Montaigne on how writing about himself shaped him in turn.
Verified in the full text of Of Giving the Lie on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3600 · Collected in Essays of Michel de Montaigne
This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Our note: Polonius's parting advice to his son Laertes, who is leaving for France.
Verified in the full text of Hamlet on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #100 · Collected in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Painted the same decade: Madonna and Child with Saints, Ludovico Carracci, 1607
Tell me what company thou keepest, and I'll tell thee what thou art
Our note: Sancho quoting one of his many proverbs, from the second part.
Verified in the full text of Don Quixote on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #996
Painted the same decade: Samson Captured by the Philistines, Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri), 1619
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Our note: Cassius tells Brutus that their fate is in their own hands.
Verified in the full text of Julius Caesar on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #100 · Collected in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Painted the same decade: A Cardinal's Procession, Ottavio Leoni (Il Padovano), 1621
…virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed
Our note: The closing image of the same essay.
Verified in the full text of Of Adversity on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #575 · Collected in Essays
Painted the same decade: The Immaculate Conception, Guido Reni, 1627
…in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior
Our note: From Bacon's essay on revenge, which he calls a kind of wild justice.
Verified in the full text of Of Revenge on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #575 · Collected in Essays
Painted the same decade: The Immaculate Conception, Guido Reni, 1627
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve
Our note: Resolution, the fourth of the thirteen virtues Franklin set out to practise.
Verified in the full text of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #148
Painted the same decade: Elizabeth Farren (born about 1759, died 1829), Later Countess of Derby, Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1790
I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves
Our note: Wollstonecraft on what she wants education to give women.
Verified in the full text of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3420
Painted the same decade: Elizabeth Farren (born about 1759, died 1829), Later Countess of Derby, Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1790
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
Our note: Fanny to Henry Crawford, who has asked her to guide his conduct.
Verified in the full text of Mansfield Park on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #141
Painted the same decade: Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord (1754–1838), Prince de Talleyrand, Pierre Paul Prud'hon, 1817
A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity.
Our note: A principle Victor states while telling his story.
Verified in the full text of Frankenstein on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #84
Painted the same decade: The Public Viewing David's "Coronation" at the Louvre, Louis Léopold Boilly, 1810
…a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
Our note: The narrator on Rip's wife, Dame Van Winkle.
Verified in the full text of Rip Van Winkle on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #2048 · Collected in The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
Painted the same decade: General Étienne-Maurice Gérard (1773–1852), Jacques Louis David, 1816
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it.
Our note: The narrator, in an essay on a wife who stands by her husband after his ruin.
Verified in the full text of The Wife on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #2048 · Collected in The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
Painted the same decade: Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct, Théodore Géricault, 1818
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