In a world where words often hold incredible power, a few carefully chosen sentences can ignite motivation, spark creativity, and rekindle hope. Inspirational quotes have long been cherished as nuggets of wisdom, compact yet profound, capable of leaving a lasting impact. In this blog post, we have curated an exceptional collection of inspirational quotes, each limited to 130 characters, proving that brevity can carry a remarkable depth of inspiration. Dive in and allow these concise yet potent words to propel you towards your goals and dreams.
1. “It is better to be alone than in bad company.” - George Washington
2. “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” - John Wooden
3. “If you want to find out what a man is to the bottom, give him power. Any man can stand adversity — only a great man can stand prosperity. It is the glory of Abraham Lincoln that he never abused power only on the side of mercy” - Robert Ingersoll
4. “The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back.” - Abigail Van Buren
5. “It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” - Mark Twain
6. “I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.” - Jane Austen
7. “Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.” - Abraham Lincoln
8. “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters” - Albert Einstein
9. “In all tests of character, when two viewpoints are pitted against one another, in the final analysis the thing that will strike you the most, is not who was right or wrong, strong or weak, wise or foolish.... but who would go to the greatest lengths in considering the other's perspective. ” - MIke Dooley
10. “A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow. ” - Friedrich Nietzsche
11. “When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.” - W.Somerset Maugham
12. “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.” - Albert Schweitzer
13. “Character is plot, plot is character.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. “If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky
15. “Thought creates character.” - Annie Bessant
16. “Character is not made by crisis. It is only exhibited.” - Robert Freeman
17. “It's rather disconcerting to sit around a table in a critique of someone else's work, only to realize that the antagonist in the story is none other than yourself, and no one present thinks you're a very likable character.” - Michelle Richmond
18. “Character is doing what you don't want to do but know you should do.” - Joyce Meyer
19. “Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.” - Ann Landers
20. “One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: ‘To rise above little things’.” - John Burroughs
21. “I really do literally put myself into a character's shoes.” - Ruth Rendell
22. “All cruelty springs from weakness.” - seneca
23. “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” - Maya Angelou
24. “The world loves talent but pays off on character.” - John W. Gardner
25. “In his opinion, working was vastly overrated. Particularly as a way to build character, for everyone who engaged in it was far too snappish and fussy, and seemed to have no manners at all.” - Hilari Bell
26. “Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
27. “People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.” - George Eliot
28. “Get to know two things about a man. How he earns his money and how he spends it. You will then have the clue to his character. You will have a searchlight that shows up the inmost recesses of his soul. You know all you need to know about his standards, his motives, his driving desires, his real religion.” - Robert J. McCracken
29. “Developing better people should be the number one goal for any coach when dealing with kids. In trying to develop better people, we are going to develop more and better pros.” - Bobby Orr
30. “You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.” - Richard Bach
31. “A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.” - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
32. “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
33. “I have a deep-down belief that there are folks in the world who are good through and through, and others who came in mean and will go out mean. It's like coffee. Once it's roasted, it all looks brown. Until you pour hot water on it and see what comes out. Folks get into hot water, you see what comes out.” - Nancy E. Turner
34. “Seorang perempuan yang sifatnya jahat tidak pantas diperlakukan sebagai seorang perempuan. [Ramayana Mahabharata, hal. 33]” - R.K. Narayan
35. “Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character.” - Alan Armstrong
36. “There was a saying that a man's true character was revealed in defeat. I thought it was also revealed in victory.” - Alison Goodman
37. “[...] należała jednak do tych kobiet, które łączą w sobie zdrową urodę z histeryczną łzawliwością, wybuchy liryczne z bardzo praktycznym, banalnym myśleniem, podły charakter z sentymentalizmem, ospałą bierność z trzeźwą umiejętnością wysyłania bliźnich na poszukiwanie wiatru w polu.” - Vladimir Nabokov
38. “The average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul - desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would change. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic.” - Truman Capote
39. “My kinfolks thought more about character than about culture. They said culture could be acquired but character had to be formed. Character had to be hammered into shape like hot iron on an anvil. It had to be molded in the most exact and unrelenting form.” - Ben Robertson
40. “In the end you should always do the right thing even if it's hard.” - Nicholas Sparks
41. “Because you live to love and love to live/ And because of what your heardrum will give/ Now we might love to live and live to love.” - Janet Goodfriend
42. “A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path, for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.” - Rudyard Kipling
43. “Why are some countries able, despite their very real and serious problems, to press ahead along the road to reconciliation, recovery, and redevelopment while others cannot? These are critical questions for Africa, and their answers are complex and not always clear. Leadership is crucial, of course. Kagame was a strong leader–decisive, focused, disciplined, and honest–and he remains so today. I believe that sometimes people's characters are molded by their environment. Angola, like Liberia, like Sierra Leone, is resource-rich, a natural blessing that sometimes has the sad effect of diminishing the human drive for self-sufficiency, the ability and determination to maximize that which one has. Kagame had nothing. He grew up in a refugee camp, equipped with only his own strength of will and determination to create a better life for himself and his countrymen. ” - Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
44. “As man sows, so shall he reap. In works of fiction, such men are sometimes converted. More often, in real life, they do not change their natures until they are converted into dust.” - Charles W. Chesnutt
45. “If you are well-mannered towards those whose views are similar to yours, you may be said to exhibit a fairly good character. But, if you behave properly wit those holding divergent views from you or who criticize you, then you deserve to be credited with having an excellent character. (p. 99)” - Wahiduddin Khan
46. “Happiness consists not of having, but of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is a warm glow of the heart at peace with itself. A martyr at the stake may have happiness that a king on his throne might envy. Man is the creator of his own happiness. It is the aroma of life, lived in harmony with high ideals. For what a man has he may be dependent upon others; what he is rests with him alone.” - David O. McKay
47. “Osby wasn't considered the smartest man in Eads County. But the no one . . . knew him well enough to realize that he wasn't all that far from it either.” - Josh Weil
48. “Whenever you take on playing a villain, he has to cease to be a villain to you. If you judge this man by his time, he's doing very little wrong.” - Colin Firth
49. “Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.” - Ayn Rand
50. “You do me proud, Captain. But, dear, I want to say one thing and then I'm done; for you don't need much advice of mine after my good man has spoken. I read somewhere that every inch of rope in the British Navy has a strand of red in it, so wherever a bit of it is found it is known. That is the text of my little sermon to you. Virtue, which means honour, honesty, courage, and all that makes character, is the red thread that marks a good man wherever he is. Keep that always and everywhere, so that even if wrecked by misfortune, that sign shall still be found and recognized. Yours is a rough life, and your mates not all we could wish, but you can be a gentleman in the true sense of the word; and no matter what happens to your body, keep your soul clean, your heart true to those who love you, and do your duty to the end.” - Louisa May Alcott
51. “Worthy character is best forged from a life of consistent, correct choices centered in the teachings of the Master. ” - Richard G. Scott
52. “There was not a moving up into vacated places; there was simply an anachronistic staying on between a vanishing past and an incalculable future.” - F.Scott Fitzgerald
53. “He that commends me to mine own contentCommends me to the thing I cannot get.I to the world am like a drop of waterThat in the ocean seeks another drop,Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself:So I, to find a mother and a brother,In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.” - William Shakespeare
54. “The decent, strong person had to do decent, strong things like love unlovable people and keep peace even when it wasn't easy.” - Mary Connealy
55. “The prospect of an early death sits differently upon each person. In some it gifts maturity far outweighing their age and experience: calm acceptance blossoms into a beautiful nature and soft countenance. In others, however, it leads to the formation of a tiny ice flint in their heart. Ice that, though at times concealed, never properly melts.Rose, though she would have liked to be one of the former, knew herself deep down to be one of the latter.” - Kate Morton
56. “Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.” - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
57. “Magic comes from the heart, from your feelings, your deepest expressions of desire. That's why black magic is so easy—it comes from lust, from fear and anger, from things that are easy to feed and make grow. The sort I do is harder. It comes from something deeper than that, a truer and purer source—harder to tap, harder to keep, but ultimately more elegant, more powerful. My magic. That was at the heart of me. It was a manifestation of what I believed, what I lived. It came from my desire to see to it that someone stood between the darkness and the people it would devour. It came from my love of a good steak, from the way I would sometimes cry at a good movie or a moving symphony. From my life. From the hope that I could make things better for someone else, if not always for me. Somewhere, in all of that, I touched on something that wasn't tapped out, in spite of how horrible the past days had been, something that hadn't gone cold and numb inside of me. I grasped it, held it in my hand like a firefly, and willed its energy out, into the circle I had created with the spinning amulet on the end of its chain.” - Jim Butcher
58. “There is an emotional promiscuity we’ve noticed among many good young men and women. The young man understands something of the journey of the heart. He wants to talk, to “share the journey.” The woman is grateful to be pursued, she opens up. They share the intimacies of their lives - their wounds, their walks with God. But he never commits. He enjoys her... then leaves. And she wonders, What did I do wrong? She failed to see his passivity. He really did not ever commit or offer assurances that he would. Like Willoughby to Marianne in Sense and Sensibility.Be careful you do not offer too much of yourself to a man until you have good, solid evidence that he is a strong man willing to commit. Look at his track record with other women. Is there anything to be concerned about there? If so, bring it up. Also, does he have any close male friends - and what are they like as men? Can he hold down a job? Is he walking with God in a real and intimate way? Is he facing the wounds of his own life, and is he also demonstrating a desire to repent of Adam’s passivity and/or violence? Is he headed somewhere with his life? A lot of questions, but your heart is a treasure, and we want you to offer it only to a man who is worthy and ready to handle it well.” - Stasi Eldredge
59. “LADY BRACKNELLTo speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.” - Oscar Wilde
60. “Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.” - Bruce Lee
61. “people have character strength but they lack communication skills, and that undoubtedly affects the quality of relationships as well.” - Stephen R. Covey
62. “The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.” - William Shakespeare
63. “End of Construction. Thank you 'for your patience. " Inscription on Ruth Bell Graham's grave -- inspired hy a road sign she saw.” - Billy Graham
64. “Fat’ is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her.I mean, is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ‘shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or ‘cruel’? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? I’m not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain…I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadn’t seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!’‘Well,’ I said, slightly nonplussed, ‘the last time you saw me I’d just had a baby.’What I felt like saying was, ‘I’ve produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren’t either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?’ But no – my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!I’ve got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don’t want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I’d rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before ‘thin’. And frankly, I’d rather they didn’t give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons.” - J.K. Rowling
65. “It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of te chest beneath that makes them seem so.” - C.S. Lewis
66. “He could not name precisely the special quality she possessed. A glow. An exuberance. An aggressive and determined joy that gave her the courage to push past his defenses, to confront him with unflinching courage, to look into his heart and to see something there worth fighting for.” - Susan Wiggs
67. “Talent is a gift, but character is a choice.” - John C. Maxwell
68. “Grudges are for those who insist that they are owed something; forgiveness, however, is for those who are substantial enough to move on.” - Criss Jami
69. “Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” - Criss Jami
70. “Easily mistaken, it is not about a love for adversity, it is about knowing a strength and a faith so great that adversity, in all its adverse manifestations, hardly even exists.” - Criss Jami
71. “To think but nobly of my grandmother: Good wombs have borne bad sons.” - William Shakespeare
72. “The boundaries of this world are forever shifting – from day to night, joy to sorrow, love to hate, and from life itself to death; and who can say at what moment we may suddenly cross over the border, from one state of existence to another, like heat applied to some flammable substance? I have been given my own ever-changing margins, across which I move, continually and hungrily, like a migrating animal. Now civilized, now untamed; now responsive to decency and human concern, now viciously attuned to the darkest of desires.” - Michael Cox
73. “You could know a man not by what his friends said about him, but by how he treated his servants.” - Cassandra Clare
74. “He lives who dies to win a lasting name.” - Henry Drummond
75. “It is difficult to make a reputation, but is even more difficult seriously to mar a reputation once properly made --- so faithful is the public.” - Arnold Bennett
76. “Don't write about Man; write about a man.” - E.B. White
77. “The distinction between diseases of "brain" and "mind," between "neurological" problems and "psychological" or "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind. Diseases of the brain are seen as tragedies visited on people who cannot be blamed for their condition, while diseases of the mind, especially those that affect conduct and emotion, are seen as social inconveniences for which sufferers have much to answer. Individuals are to be blamed for their character flaws, defective emotional modulation, and so on; lack of willpower is supposed to be the primary problem.” - António R. Damásio
78. “So do I wish I was to be king? That is not a question I ask myself. I ask myself, Would I be a good king? Would I be quick witted and generous of spirit and full of that boundless energy? Or would I be clumsy and stupid and dulled by my own prejudices? I try to be a good man, since I am alive at all, and hope that that teaches me what I would need to know if I was ever faced with a higher challenge.” - Sharon Shinn
79. “Indeed, she often wondered if she were dead, or dying from the inside out, and that was the root of her calm, the reason she could surrender her character.” - Gregory Maguire
80. “[Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.” - Aristophanes
81. “You can stop a raging forest fire, a herd of stampeding buffalo or even a runaway freight train, but you can’t stop a good man".” - John Paul warren
82. “silence is not weakness and decency is not pride” - Arthur Machen
83. “É preciso que todos os que lidam comigo se convençam de que sou assim, e que exigir-me os sentimentos, aliás muito dignos, de um homem vulgar e banal, é como exigir-me que tenha olhos azuis e cabelo louro.” - Fernando Pessoa
84. “Don't the great tales never end?""No, they never end as tales," said Frodo. "But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later – or sooner.” - J.R.R. Tolkien
85. “I study men like I study books: I skim their midsections.” - Bauvard
86. “I go on the presumption that everyone's full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead.” - Dennis Lehane
87. “We want character but without unyielding conviction; we want strong morality but without the emotional burden of guilt or shame; we want virtue but without particular moral justifications that invariably offend; we want good without having to name evil; we want decency without the authority to insist upon it; we want more community without any limitations to personal freedom. In short, we want what we cannot possibly have on the terms that we want it.” - James Davison Hunter
88. “Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.” - Arthur Conan Doyle
89. “it's through the simple things in life, through its games, when our minds mature the most and we grow knowledgeable. It's also when the cloth masks of our outer, false personalities are torn asunder, and we are able to see every last blemish of a man's genuine character that they hide beneath... no matter how dark or obscene it may be.” - Evan Meekins
90. “You are honest enough by nature to be able to see and judge your own self clearly - and that is a great thing. Never lose that honesty, Bobby - always be honest with yourself, know your own motives for what they are, good or bad, make your own decisions firmly and justly - and you will be a fine, strong character, of some real use in this muddled world of ours!” - Enid Blyton
91. “There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
92. “Financial crashes happen precisely because the people who remember the last one have either died or retired and thus are no longer around, with memories and character formed by that previous experience, to warn people not to be irresponsible.” - N.T. Wright
93. “In essence, we are deeper than being; we are character, which contains the conscious forces of love, justice, kindness, faith, and forgiveness.” - Gary Gordon
94. “Kind old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character. A cat will always go to a good man, they say[.]” - Virginia Woolf
95. “People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
96. “It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it's close.” - Jesse Owens
97. “A person's worth is measured by the worth of what he values.” - Marcus Aurelius
98. “No man engaged in a work he does not like can preserve many saving illusionsabout himself. The distaste, the absence of glamour, extend from the occupation to the personality. It is only when ourappointed activities seem by a lucky accident to obey the particular earnestness of our temperament that we can taste the comfort of complete self-deception.” - Joseph Conrad
99. “He was all of those things, of course, but none of those things.” - Marie Tillman
100. “Ann: You didn’t cause my miscarriages. But you are committed to transforming me to be like you.” - K. Howard Joslin
101. “Encourage literally came from "in courage." The courage is put "into" you from outside. Our character and abilities grow through internalizing from others what we do not possess in ourselves.” - Dr. Henry Cloud
102. “99% of all addicts are liars and thieves. This might sound unfair and even close-minded, but it's the truth. There are some exceptions to the rules, but they are incredibly rare. Most people are no match for their addictions. They will be driven to do things they would normally never have considered all in the name of getting high. Sad, but true. So if you're thinking of trying drugs, keep in mind that all the people you will be dealing with are likely to steal from you and lie to you at your own expense.” - Ashly Lorenzana
103. “A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.” - Anne Lamott
104. “The one surefire way to get me not to hire you is to send me your resume, especially if you've already got a good job. I won't be interested, because in a couple years, you'll be doing the same thing to me that you're doing to your current boss: looking for a better deal.” - Bo Schembechler
105. “What if God doesn’t keep his promises?” - K. Howard Joslin
106. “He lay back, put his arm over his eyes, and tried to hold onto the anger, because the anger made him feel brave. A brave man could think. A coward couldn't.” - Stephen King
107. “Absolute power doesn't corrupt, but rather, reveals character.” - Orrin Woodward
108. “Affronts to her reputation pierced her to the heart, though I couldn’t understand why, since she had very little character left to defend.” - Melika Dannese Lux
109. “I prefer to suffer than repent because I stand by my decision and capable enough top pay for it Or reap the beauty later.” - Ravindra Shukla
110. “Everyone makes mistakes, but only a person with integrity owns up to them.” - Nicole Guillaume
111. “Her flesh was powdery and voluptuously weary, as if tenderized by all the different beds and arms in which she had lain. Her face was as soft as the pulpy flash of an overripe banana, her breasts like two tiny bunches of grapes. She exuded a certain seedy charm, a poetry of premature corruption and decay. She breathed the air as if it burned her palate, baking her small, hot, whorish mouth. It was as if she were sucking a sweet or slurping champagne.” - Dezső Kosztolányi
112. “You think some are bad or evil or whatnot, but somewhere along the way they were someone's baby, suckling the teat like anybody. Then something puts a volt in 'em and they ain't the same no more.” - Alan Heathcock
113. “...if you're an actor, and you've thought your way into the part, then you're character portrayal will have authority...” - John Geddes
114. “I'm starting to feel like a character from one of these books” - Christina Tetreault
115. “There is no greater evil than men's failure to consult and to consider.” - Sophocles
116. “Character is contagious.” - Wayde Goodall
117. “We largely become what we have observed and respected.” - Wayde Goodall
118. “One uncontrolled character flaw can ruin your greatest accomplishment.” - Wayde Goodall
119. “People will follow you when you build the character to follow through.” - Orrin Woodward
120. “While your character flaws may have created mild problems for other people, they will create major problems for your spouse and your marriage.” - Timothy Keller
121. “One thing I've learned in life is that I can speak for myself, that I can fight my own battles. I don't like anyone telling me how I'm supposed to feel or think or what I'm supposed to say.” - Hope Solo
122. “Children are ingenuous. They are also blessed with uncanny ability to read a person's character instantly. Even though they are inexperienced and unsophisticated, they often know instinctively who can be trusted and who is the charlatan.” - Wess Stafford
123. “A well-developed and versed character will write the story for you.” - A.R. Voss
124. “To test a man, determine how much it takes to make him lie.” - C.J. Langenhoven
125. “The character of Jesus can only be ultimately known experientially through the indwelling of His Spirit in union with us."~"The character of Jesus can only be ultimately known experientially through the indwelling of His Spirit in union with us."~R. Alan Woods [2013]” - R. Alan Woods
126. “For a Hero cannot triumph all the time. Sometimes he will be defeated, and how he faces that defeat is a test of his character.” - Cressida Cowell
127. “Every brush stroke on the canvas, every dab of color introduced, the fine textures impressed in the paint—this accumulation of many small acts combines to shape a final work of art. And so it is with life; each step, each deed, each brief choice builds gradually, day by day, to shape both character and destiny.” - Richelle E. Goodrich
128. “If you want to discover the true character of a person, you have only to observe what they are passionate about.” - Shannon L. Alder
129. “Cooperation is a higher moral principle than competition.” - Bryant McGill
130. “To that point, he had always found the vicomtesse overflowing with friendly politeness, that sweet-flowing grace conferred by an aristocratic education, and which is never truly there unless it comes, automatically and unthinkingly, straight from the heart.[...]For anyone who had learned the social code, and Rastignac had absorbed it all in a flash, these words, that gesture, that look, that inflection in her voice, summed up all there was to know about the nature and the ways of men and women of her class. He was vividly aware of the iron hand underneath the velvet glove; the personality, and especially the self-centeredness, under the polished manners; the plain hard wood, under all the varnish. [...] Eugène had been entirely too quick to take this woman's word for her own kindness. Like all those who cannot help themselves, he had signed on the dotted line, accepting the delightful contract binding both benefactor and recipient, the very first clause of which makes clear that, as between noble souls, perfect equality must be forever maintained. Beneficience, which ties people together, is a heavenly passion, but a thoroughly misunderstood one, and quite as scarce as true love. Both stem from the lavish nature of great souls.” - Honoré de Balzac
