Any kid who has two parents who are interested in him and has a houseful of books isn’t poor.
—SAM LEVENSON
Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.
—RUTH E. RENKEL
in National Enquirer
The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.
—DENIS WAITLEY
A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.
—Spotlight (Boise, Idaho)
I have found that the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want, and then advise them to do it.
—HARRY S. TRUMAN
If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself.
—DOROTHY LAW NOLTE
Parents need to fill a child’s bucket of self-esteem so high that the rest of the world can’t poke enough holes in it to drain it dry.
—ALVIN PRICE
Every adult needs a child to teach; it’s the way adults learn.
—FRANK A. CLARK
Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.
—LADY BIRD JOHNSON
If you can’t hold children in your arms, please hold them in your heart.
—MOTHER CLARA HALE
You cannot train a horse with shouts and expect it to obey a whisper.
—DAGOBERT D. RUNES
Letters to My Son
What’s done to children, they will do to society.
—DR. KARL MENNINGER
What a father says to his children is not heard by the world; but it will be heard by posterity.
—JEAN PAUL RICHTER
Never fear spoiling children by making them too happy. Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow.
—THOMAS BRAY
The only thing worth stealing is a kiss from a sleeping child.
—JOE HOULDSWORTH
MANNERS ARE THE HAPPY WAY . . .
Manners are the happy way of doing things.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.
—EMILY POST
Most arts require long study and application, but the most useful of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.
—LORD CHESTERFIELD
Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Politeness is the art of selecting among one’s real thoughts.
—MADAME DE STAËL
To have a respect for ourselves guides our morals; to have a deference for others governs our manners.
—LAURENCE STERNE
Manners are like the zero in arithmetic; they may not be much in themselves, but they are capable of adding a great deal to the value of everything else.
—FREYA STARK
The Journey’s Echo
Etiquette is getting sleepy in company and not showing it.
—HYMAN MAXWELL BERSTON
You can get through life with bad manners, but it’s easier with good manners.
—LILLIAN GISH
Diplomacy gets you out of what tact would have kept you out of.
—BRIAN BOWLING
The point of tact is not sharp.
—COLLEEN CARNEY
People with tact have less to retract.
—ARNOLD H. GLASOW
Tact consists in knowing how far we may go too far.
—JEAN COCTEAU
A Call to Order
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
—HOWARD W. NEWTON
Tact is the art of making guests feel at home when that’s really where you wish they were.
—GEORGE E. BERGMAN
in Good Housekeeping
Tact is rubbing out another’s mistake instead of rubbing it in.
—Farmers’ Almanac
Tact is the art of recognizing when to be big and when not to belittle.
—BILL COPELAND
Tact is the ability to stay in the middle without getting caught there.
—FRANKLIN P. JONES
Tact is the art of convincing people that they know more than you do.
—RAYMOND MORTIMER
Tact is the art of building a fire under people without making their blood boil.
—FRANKLIN P. JONES
Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.
—CORDELL HULL
The truly free man is he who knows how to decline a dinner invitation without giving an excuse.
—JULES RENARD
Every generation is convinced there has been a deplorable breakdown of manners.
—BYRON DOBELL
in American Heritage
To be agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you already know.
—TALLEYRAND
It takes a lot of thought and effort and downright determination to be agreeable.
—RAY D. EVERSON
Praise is like champagne; it should be served while it is still bubbling.
—Robins Reader
Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.
—HENRI FRÉDÉRIC AMIEL
A gentleman is a man who uses a butter knife when dining alone.
—W. F. DETTLE
Nothing prevents us from being natural so much as the desire to appear so.
—FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
It is a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming.
—OSCAR WILDE
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
—ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
He who says what he likes, hears what he does not like.
—LEONARD LOUIS LEVINSON
The manner in which it is given is worth more than the gift.
—PIERRE CORNEILLE
To receive a present handsomely and in a right spirit, even when you have none to give in return, is to give one in return.
—LEIGH HUNT
Essays by Leigh Hunt
It is much easier to be a hero than a gentleman.
—LUIGI PIRANDELLO
Never claim as a right what you can ask as a favor.
—JOHN CHURTON COLLINS
To err is human; to refrain from laughing, humane.
—LANE OLINGHOUSE
A CONTINENT OF UNDISCOVERED CHARACTER . . .
Every one of us has in him a continent of undiscovered character. Blessed is he who acts the Columbus to his own soul.
—Quoted in Words of Life, edited by
Charles L. Wallis
Character is a strange blending of flinty strength and pliable warmth.
—ROBERT SHAFFER
No man knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan, and raised an adolescent.
—EDNA MCCANN
The Heritage Book 1985
Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.
—PHILLIPS BROOKS
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Everyone journeys through character as well as through time. The person one becomes depends on the person one has b
een.
—DICK FRANCIS
A Jockey’s Life: The Biography of Lester Piggott
Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
—JAMES MICHENER
Chesapeake
You can measure a man by the opposition it takes to discourage him.
—ROBERT C. SAVAGE
Life Lessons
We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.
—ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER
in The New York Times Magazine
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
—KURT VONNEGUT
Hocus Pocus
Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.
—JOHN STUART MILL
The severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along.
—SYDNEY J. HARRIS
Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.
—THOMAS CARLYLE
People need responsibility. They resist assuming it, but they cannot get along without it.
—JOHN STEINBECK
in Saturday Review
If anyone thinks he has no responsibilities, it is because he has not sought them out.
—MARY LYON
Duty is a very personal thing. It is what comes from knowing the need to take action and not just a need to urge others to do something.
—MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA
Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs, but rather how to remain human in the skyscrapers.
—RABBI ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL
The Insecurity of Freedom
The treacherous, unexplored areas of the world are not in continents or the seas; they are in the minds and hearts of men.
—ALLEN E. CLAXTON
The truth about a man is, first of all, what it is that he keeps hidden.
—ANDRÉ MALRAUX
Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
—PLATO
There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.
—SINCLAIR LEWIS
Sports do not build character. They reveal it.
—HEYWOOD HALE BROUN
How a man plays the game shows something of his character; how he loses shows all of it.
—Tribune (Camden County, Georgia)
In our play we reveal what kind of people we are.
—OVID
You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.
—LEO AIKMAN
Character is what you know you are, not what others think you are.
—MARVA COLLINS AND CIVIA TAMARKIN
Marva Collins’ Way
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
—JAMES D. MILES
Character is much easier kept than recovered.
—THOMAS PAINE
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
—SOCRATES
A good reputation is better than fame.
—LOUIS DUDEK
Epigrams
Reputation is character minus what you’ve been caught doing.
—MICHAEL IAPOCE
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Boardroom
Life is for one generation; a good name is forever.
—JAPANESE PROVERB
To have lost your reputation is to be dead among the living.
—S. H. SIMMONS
Modesty is to merit what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand out.
—JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
Modesty is the clothing of talent.
—PIERRE VERON
He who is slowest in making a promise is most faithful in its performance.
—JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.
—HENRY L. STIMSON
in Harper’s Magazine
Willpower is being able to eat just one salted peanut.
—PAT ELPHINSTONE
The best discipline, maybe the only discipline that really works, is self-discipline.
—WALTER KIECHEL III
in Fortune
You can find on the outside only what you possess on the inside.
—ADOLFO MONTIEL BALLESTEROS
La Honda y La Flor
In great matters men show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small matters, as they are.
—GAMALIEL BRADFORD
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
I see God in every human being.
—MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA
Men may be divided almost any way we please, but I have found the most useful distinction to be made between those who devote their lives to conjugating the verb “to be,” and those who spend their lives conjugating the verb “to have.”
—SYDNEY J. HARRIS
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape Nuts on principle.
—G. K. CHESTERTON
One of the best ways to measure people is to watch the way they behave when something free is offered.
—ANN LANDERS
Say not you know a man entirely till you have divided an inheritance with him.
—JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER
Not what I have but what I do is my kingdom.
—THOMAS CARLYLE
The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.
—JAPANESE PROVERB
Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.
—SOCRATES
Dollars have never been known to produce character, and character will never be produced by money.
—W. K. KELLOGG
I’ll Invest My Money in People
One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas—and you have to work through it all.
—V. S. NAIPAUL
Don’t laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find a face of his own.
—LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.
—W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
—JOHN STEINBECK
America and Americans
Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
—BERNARD MALAMUD
The Natural
The great man is he who does not lose his child-heart.
—MENCIUS
No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting.
—MURRAY KEMPTON
in Newsday (Long Island, New York)
Characters live to be noticed. People with charac
ter notice how they live.
—NANCY MOSER
Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone and more fragile than a rose.
—TURKISH PROVERB
He is ill clothed that is bare of virtue.
—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.
—THEODORE M. HESBURGH
To err is human; to blame it on the other guy is even more human.
—BOB GODDARD
Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
—JOHN STEINBECK
Sweet Thursday
There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.
—SAMUEL BECKETT
Waiting for Godot
AN OPTIMIST STAYS UP UNTIL MIDNIGHT . . .
An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.
Quotable Quotes Page 7
