Source identified
“No legacy is so rich as honesty.”
Voice: Fictional character · Mariana
The line values trustworthy character above possessions or reputation inherited after death.
Source note: All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 3, Scene 5; the line occurs in dialogue that values honest character above material inheritance.
Source identified
“requires earnest purpose, honest self-devotion, and hard work.”
Smiles argues that social reform requires committed people and sustained effort rather than money alone, joining honesty, purpose and work in one historical reform ethic.
Source note: Thrift, Chapter XIV, “Riches and Charity,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles argues that money alone cannot reform conduct and says change from intemperance, improvidence and irreligion requires earnest purpose, self-devotion and hard work; that nineteenth-century reform context is preserved.
Source identified
“Humility should not be an abasement; for it is never a virtue in man to lower himself.”
Janet sharply separates humility from self-degradation: accurate awareness of human weakness should coexist with dignity, so humility does not require pretending that one has no worth or abilities.
Source note: Elements of Morals, section 165, Caroline Rollin Corson translation, Project Gutenberg #37016. Janet contrasts humility with false abasement and defines it alongside self-respect as an accurate estimate of both human weakness and human dignity.
Source identified
“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power.”
Voice: Poetic speaker · Pallas
Tennyson joins respect for oneself with knowledge and restraint: durable personal power is presented as the result of living by an inward law rather than seeking power merely for its own sake.
Source note: Oenone, in The Early Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Project Gutenberg #8601. Pallas speaks the lines while arguing that self-reverence, self-knowledge and self-control lead to a life governed by right rather than by reward; this is poetic character speech, not a prose maxim detached from the poem.
Source identified
“Character is power.”
The compressed maxim treats durable conduct and reliability as forms of influence that do not depend entirely on position or display.
Source note: Architects of Fate; Project Gutenberg #21622. The short maxim appears in Marden’s discussion of character.
Source identified
“Character is property.”
A good name and dependable conduct are described as forms of value that belong to a person even when material circumstances change.
Source note: Character, Chapter I, “Influence of Character,” Project Gutenberg #2541. The brief statement introduces Smiles’s comparison of character with property: an enduring possession expressed through goodwill, esteem and an honourably earned reputation.