Meaning of “For character is itself a fortune.”

All’s Well That Ends Well, Act III, Scene 5; Mariana warns Diana about Bertram and says that no legacy is so rich as honesty. Verified against Wikisource’s 1910 facsimile transcription of the 1623 First Folio; direct evidence resolves to the reviewed Act III transcription.

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.

Black Beauty, Part I, Chapter 3, “My Breaking In,” Project Gutenberg #271. Black Beauty’s mother advises him to do his best and keep his good name after warning that horses may pass into kind, careless or cruel human hands. The equine narrator and animal-welfare context remain explicit.

Elements of Morals, Chapter XIV, section 165, printed page 296, Caroline Rollin Corson’s 1884 English translation, Project Gutenberg #37016. Janet distinguishes humility from abasement: humility arises from recognition of human weakness, but lowering oneself is not itself a virtue. The passage belongs to nineteenth-century systematic moral philosophy rather than modern clinical self-esteem guidance.

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.

Architects of Fate; Project Gutenberg #21622. The short maxim appears in Marden’s discussion of character.