Nothing endures but personal qualities. [ Walt Whitman ]
Sure, of qualities demanding praise,
More go to ruin fortunes, than to raise. [ Pope ]
Etiquette has no regard for moral qualities. [ Douglas Jerrold ]
Decision and perseverance are the noblest qualities of man. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Persons unmask their evilest qualities when they do quarrel. [ George Herbert ]
Forethought and prudence are the proper qualities of a leader. [ Tacitus ]
A woman's best qualities are harmful if undiluted with prudence. [ Victor Hugo ]
Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities. [ Madame de Stael ]
A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions. [ Lowell ]
Would you know the qualities a man lacks, examine those of which he boasts. [ Segur ]
We are often more agreeable through our faults than through our good qualities. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Be not dazzled by beauty, but look for those inward qualities which are lasting. [ Seneca ]
I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well. [ Goldsmith ]
For the qualities of sheer wit and humor. Swift had no superior, ancient or modern. [ Leigh Hunt ]
Mental courage, infinitely rarer than valour, presupposes the most eminent qualities. [ Diderot ]
Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds, shining qualities beneath a rough exterior. [ Juvenal ]
Wit is a zero added to our moral qualities; but which, standing alone, represents nothing. [ C. Jordan ]
We attract hearts by the qualities we display; we retain them by the qualities we possess. [ Suard ]
The most brilliant qualities become useless when they are not sustained by force of character. [ Segur ]
Wine, though it possesses good qualities, was forbidden by the prophet, because it attacked reason. [ Hais-Bais ]
The true greatness of nations is in those qualities which constitute the greatness of the individual. [ Charles Sumner ]
There is a sort of charm in ugliness, if the person has some redeeming qualities and is only ugly enough. [ H. W. Shaw ]
The art of putting well into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than true merit achieves. [ Rochefoucauld ]
We do love beauty at first sight; and we do cease to love it, if it is not accompanied by amiable qualities. [ Lydia Maria Child ]
Hearts may be attracted by assumed qualities, but the affections are only to be fixed by those that are real. [ De Moy ]
It is with flowers as with moral qualities; the bright are sometimes poisonous, but I believe never the sweet. [ J. C. Hare ]
Good qualities are the substantial riches of the mind, but it is good-breeding that sets them off to advantage. [ Locke ]
Coolness, and absence of heat and haste, indicate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise, a lady is serene. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul. [ Montaigne ]
Hearts may be attracted by assumed qualities, but the affections are not to be fixed but by those which are real. [ De Moy ]
We wish others to possess, or to acquire, all the qualities and virtues that can serve our pleasures or interests. [ De Finod ]
We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities which we do not possess. [ Emerson ]
There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence. [ S. Bailey ]
Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society. We do not go to market with ingots, but with silver and small change. [ Chamfort ]
The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither their good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity. [ Sallust ]
A beautiful woman with the qualities of a noble man is the most perfect thing in nature: we find in her all the merits of both sexes. [ La Bruyere ]
In love we never think of moral qualities, and scarcely of intellectual ones. Temperament and manner alone, with beauty, excite love. [ Hazlitt ]
Praise never gives us much pleasure unless it concur with our own opinion, and extol us for those qualities in which we chiefly excel. [ Hume ]
It is with certain good qualities as with the senses; those who are entirely deprived of them can neither appreciate nor comprehend them. [ Rochefoucauld ]
The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding. [ Addison ]
The generality of men are wholly governed by names in matters of good and evil, so far as the qualities relate to and affect the actions of men. [ South ]
Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities. [ Colton ]
The qualities of your friends will be those of your enemies - cold friends, cold enemies; half friends, half enemies; fervid enemies, warm friends. [ Lavater ]
There is among men such intense affectation that they often boast of defects which they have not, more willingly than of qualities which they have. [ George Sand ]
Perseverance and tact are the two great qualities most valuable for all men who would mount, but especially for those who have to step out of the crowd. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]
Exact justice is commonly more merciful in the long run than pity, for it tends to foster in men those stronger qualities which make them good citizens. [ Lowell ]
Qualities of a too superior order render a man less adapted to society. One does not go to market with big lumps of gold; one goes with silver or small change. [ Chamfort ]
It is generally admitted, and very frequently proved, that virtue and genius, and all the natural good qualities which men possess, are derived from their mothers. [ T. Hook ]
For as much as to understand and to be mighty are great qualities, the higher that they be, they are so much the less to be esteemed if goodness also abound not in the possessor. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
It may be remarked for the comfort of honest poverty that avarice reigns most in those who have but few good qualities to recommend them. This is a weed that will grow in a barren soil. [ Hughes ]
Self-love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them; and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
We feel neither extreme heat nor extreme cold; qualities that are in excess are so much at variance with our feelings that they are impalpable: we do not feel them, though we suffer from their effects. [ Pascal ]
We are more jealous of frivolous accomplishments with brilliant success, than of the most estimable qualities without. Dr. Johnson envied Garrick, whom he despised, and ridiculed Goldsmith, whom he loved. [ Hazlitt ]
It is the qualities of the heart, not those of the face, that should attract us in women, because the former are durable, the latter transitory. So lovable women, like roses, retain their sweetness long after they have lost their beauty. [ Lamartine ]
We love a girl for very different qualities than understanding. We love her for her beauty, her youth, her mirth, her confidingness, her character, with its faults, caprices and God knows what other inexpressible charms; but we do not love her understanding. [ Goethe ]
Two qualities are demanded of a statesman who would direct any great movement of opinion in which he himself takes a part; he must have a complete understanding of the movement itself, and he must be animated by the same motives as those which inspire the movement. [ Lamartine ]
Much that is published as a novel is only anonymous biography. Many a man who is a bore in conversation may have qualities which give indescribable charms to narrative; and the egotist, if he only have the art to conceal his identity, can then hold the reader by the powerful grasp of sympathy. [ R. S. Mackenzie ]
Liberty, and not theology, is the enthusiasm of the nineteenth century. The very men who would once have been conspicuous saints are now conspicuous revolutionists, for while their heroism and disinterestedness are their own, the direction which these qualities take is determined by the pressure of the age. [ H. W. Lecky ]
Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary. [ Colton ]
A woman at middle age retains nothing of the pettiness of youth; she is a friend who gives you all the feminine delicacies, who displays all the graces, all the prepossessions which Nature has given to woman to please man, but who no longer sells these qualities. She is hateful or lovable, according to her pretensions to youth, whether they exist under the epidermis or whether they are dead. [ Balzac ]
If I were to choose the people with whom I would spend my hours of conversation, they should be certainly such as labored no further than to make themselves readily and clearly apprehended, and would have patience and curiosity to understand me. To have good sense and ability to express it are the most essential and necessary qualities in companions. When thoughts rise in us fit to utter among familiar friends, there needs but very little care in clothing them. [ Steele ]
A newspaper, like a theatre, must mainly owe its continuance in life to the fact that it pleases many persons; and in order to please many persons it will, unconsciously perhaps, respond to their several tastes, reflect their various qualities, and reproduce their views. In a certain sense it is evolved out of the community that absorbs it, and, therefore, partaking of the character of the community, while it may retain many merits and virtues, it will display itself, as in some respects ignorant, trivial, narrow, and vulgar. [ William Winter ]