The best is the cheapest. [ Franklin ]
Quality is better than quantity. [ Proverb ]
Endurance is the crowning quality. [ Lowell ]
Blood is a juice of rarest quality. [ Goethe ]
The rank is but the guinea's stamp.
The man's the gowd for a' that. [ Burns ]
Quality, not quantity, is my measure. [ Douglas Jerrold ]
Come, give us a taste of your quality. [ William Shakespeare ]
That air and harmony of shape express,
Fine by degrees, and beautifully less. [ Prior ]
Nothing endures but personal qualities. [ Walt Whitman ]
The most universal quality is diversity. [ Montaigne ]
Judge not by the number, but by the weight. [ Cicero ]
The strawberry grows underneath the nettle
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality. [ William Shakespeare ]
Amiability is the redeeming quality of fools. [ Miss Braddon ]
We measure genius by quality, not by quantity. [ Wendell Phillips ]
Earnestness is a quality as old as the heart of man. [ G. Gilfillan ]
Beauty is a quality of the heart. It is more than skin deep.
Humour is of a genial quality and is closely allied to pity. [ Henry Giles ]
Superstition is a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean. [ James Fenimore Cooper ]
Things that have a common quality ever quickly seek their kind. [ Marcus Aurelius ]
Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities. [ Madame de Stael ]
We ought to regard amiability as the quality of woman, dignity that of man. [ Cicero ]
Be not dazzled by beauty, but look for those inward qualities which are lasting. [ Seneca ]
With poetry second-rate in quality, no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind. [ John Ruskin ]
You cannot judge by outward appearances; the soul is only transparent to its Maker. [ Hosea Ballou ]
Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds, shining qualities beneath a rough exterior. [ Juvenal ]
Power obeys reality, and not appearances; power is according to quality, and not quantity. [ Emerson ]
It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others, and to forget his own. [ Cicero ]
Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause. [ Burke ]
All her excellences stand in her so silently as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge. [ Sir T. Overbury ]
Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart. [ Samuel Smiles ]
I do not believe such a quality as chance exists. Every incident that happens must be a link in a chain. [ Beaconsfield ]
Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated. [ Hazlitt ]
Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity. [ Horace Mann ]
Remember that every drop of rain that falls bears into the bosom of the earth a quality of beautiful fertility. [ G. H. Lewes ]
Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him. [ Goethe ]
Bravery is a cheap and vulgar quality, of which the brightest instances are frequently found in the lowest savage. [ Chatfield ]
Associate with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company. [ George Washington ]
Strength is natural, but grace is the growth of habit. This charming quality requires practice if it is to become lasting. [ Joubert ]
Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality. [ T. W. Higginson ]
The freedom of a government does not depend upon the quality of its laws, but upon the power that has the right to create them. [ Thaddeus Stevens ]
There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity. [ Montaigne ]
Men of strong affections are jealous of their own genius. They fear lest they should be loved for a quality, and not for themselves. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Failures always overtake those who have the power to do, without the will to act, and who need that essential quality in life, energy. [ James Ellis ]
Woman was formed to admire; man to be admirable. His are the glories of the sun at noonday; hers the softened splendors of the midnight moon. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Many are ambitious of saying grand things, that is, of being grandiloquent. Eloquence is speaking out - a quality few esteem, and fewer aim at. [ Hare ]
The Duke of Wellington brought to the post of first minister immortal fame; a quality of success which would almost seem to include all others. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]
Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities. [ Colton ]
A man or a woman may be highly irritable, and yet be sweet, tender, gentle, loving, sociable, kind, charitable, thoughtful for others, unselfish, generous. [ Charles Buxton ]
Harmless mirth is the best cordial against the consumption of the spirit; wherefore jesting is not unlawful, if it trespasseth not in quantity, quality or season. [ Fuller ]
Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious, if unmixed, and to carry the danger to the edge of ruin, nature causes each man's peculiarity to superabound. [ Emerson ]
Friends should not be chosen to flatter. The quality we should prize is that rectitude which will shrink from no truth. Intimacies which increase vanity destroy friendship. [ William Ellery Channing ]
Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold and knowledge is inert: that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates. [ Johnson ]
Flattery is an ensnaring quality, and leaves a very dangerous impression. It swells a man's imagination, entertains his vanity, and drives him to a doting upon his own person. [ Jeremy Collier ]
Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow's shadow. [ William Shakespeare ]
That constant desire of pleasing, which is the peculiar quality of some, may be called the happiest of all desires in this, that it scarcely ever fails of attaining its ends, when not disgraced by affectation. [ Fielding ]
Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smoke-stained women of Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs, and ministered to his necessities with kindness and gentle words. [ Whittier ]
It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is uninstructive; without the latter it is deceptive. [ Whately ]
Some read books only with a view to find fault, while others read only, to be taught; the former are like venomous spiders, extracting a poisonous quality, where the latter, like the bees, sip out a sweet and profitable juice. [ L'Estrange ]
No good book or good thing of any sort shows its best face at first; nay, the commonest quality in a true work of art, if its excellence have any depth and compass, is that at first sight it occasions a certain disappointment. [ Carlyle ]
There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank than those who have no rank at all. Observe the humors of a country christening, and you will find no court in Christendom so ceremonious as the quality of Brentford. [ Shenstone ]
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 ]
Genius, with all its pride in its own strength, is but a dependent quality, and cannot put forth its whole powers nor claim all its honors without an amount of aid from the talents and labors of others which it is difficult to calculate. [ Bryant ]
Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several - from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy. [ La Bruyere ]
Every modulated sound is not a song, and every voice that executes a beautiful air does not sing. Singing should enchant. But to produce this effect there must be a quality of soul and voice which is by no means common even with great singers. [ Joubert ]
He that gives all, though but little, gives much; because God looks not to the quantity of the gift, but to the quality of the givers; he that desires to give more than he can hath equaled his gift to his desire, and hath given more than he hath. [ Quarles ]
Men of quality never appear more amiable than when their dress is plain. Their birth, rank, title and its appendages are at best invidious; and as they do not need the assistance of dress, so, by their disclaiming the advantage of it, they make their superiority sit more easy. [ Shenstone ]
If thy friends be of better quality than thyself, thou mayest be sure of two things: the first, that they will be more careful to keep thy counsel, because they have more to lose than thou hast; the second, they will esteem thee for thyself, and not for that which thou dost possess. [ Sir W. Raleigh ]
Scepticism commonly takes up the room left by defect of imagination, and is the very quality of mind most likely to seek for sensual proof of supersensual things. If one came from the dead it could not believe; and yet it longs for such a witness, and will put up with a very dubious one. [ Lowell ]
Quality and title have such allurements that hundreds are ready to give up all their own importance, to cringe. to flatter, to look little, and to pall every pleasure in constraint, merely to be among the great, though without the least hopes of improving their understanding or sharing their generosity. They might be happier among their equals. [ Goldsmith ]
An inoffensive pleasantness is a good quality to improve friendship. It enlivens conversation, relieves melancholy, and conveys advice with better success than naked reprehension. This gilding the pill reconciles the palate to the prescription, without weakening the force of the ingredients, and he who can cure by recreation, and make pleasure the vehicle of health, is a doctor in good earnest. [ R. Hall ]
Good taste is essentially a moral quality. Taste is not only a part and an index of morality — it is the only morality. The first, last, and closest trial question to any living creature is, What do you like?
- and the entire object of true education is to make people not merely do right things, but enjoy the right things. What we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character. [ Ruskin ]
As the index tells us the contents of stories and directs to the particular chapter, even so does the outward habit and superficial order of garments (in man or woman) give us a taste of the spirit, and demonstratively point (as it were a manual note from the margin) all the internal quality of the soul; and there cannot be a more evident, palpable, gross manifestation of poor, degenerate, dunghilly blood and breeding than a rude, unpolished, disordered, and slovenly outside. [ Massinger ]