To laugh is the characteristic of man. [ Rabelais ]

Ever the characteristic manners of cowardice. [ Edward Everett ]

An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. [ Dr. Samuel Johnson ]

Extremes in everything is a characteristic of woman. [ De Goncourt ]

Benevolence is the distinguishing characteristic of man. [ Mencues ]

A gentleman's first characteristic is fineness of nature. [ John Ruskin ]

The true characteristic of genius - without despising rules, it knows when and how to break them. [ Channing ]

It is characteristic of pleasure that we can never recognize it to be pleasure till after it is gone. [ Alexander Smith ]

Sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. [ Carlyle ]

I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. [ Carlyle ]

Ability to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, is the characteristic of intelligence. [ Swedenborg ]

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so it is of small wits to talk much and say nothing. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Superstition is certainly not the characteristic of this age. Yet some men are bigoted in politics who are infidels in religion. [ Junius ]

The rules of prudence, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. Thou shalt not is their characteristic formula. [ Coleridge ]

It is a characteristic of old age to find the progress of time accelerated. The less one accomplishes in a given time, the shorter does the retrospect appear. [ Wilhelm von Humboldt ]

Even sleep is characteristic. How beautiful are children in their lovely innocence! how angel-like their blooming features! and how painful and anxious is the sleep of the guilty! [ Wilhelm von Humboldt ]

A man is known to his dog by the smell, to his tailor by the coat, to his friend by the smile; each of these know him, but how little or how much depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man is known only to God. [ Ruskin ]

Genius, without work, is certainly a dumb oracle; and it is unquestionably true that the men of the highest genius have invariably been found to be amongst the most plodding, hardworking, and intent men - their chief characteristic apparently consisting simply in their power of laboring more intensely and effectively than others. [ Samuel Smiles ]

Lavater told Goethe that, on a certain occasion when he held the velvet bag in the church as collector of the offerings, he tried to observe only the hands; and he satisfied himself that in every individual the shape of the hand and of the fingers, the action and sentiment in dropping the gift into the bag, were distinctly different and individually characteristic. [ Mrs. Jameson ]