“True politeness consists in the being easy one-self, and making every body about one as easy as we can.”

Defining courtesy through ease and consideration rather than ceremony · Conversation recorded by Joseph Spence, 1739

• Character
• Kindness
• Society

“His Characters are so much Nature her self that 'tis a sort of injury to call them by so distant a name as Copies of her.”

Praising the lifelike individuality of Shakespeare's characters · Preface to Shakespeare, 1725

• Character
• Literature
• Nature

“If I have written well, let it be consider'd that 'tis what no man can do without good sense, a quality that not only renders one capable of being a good writer, but a good man.”

Connecting literary judgement with judgement in life · Preface to The Works of Alexander Pope, 1717

• Character
• Wisdom
• Writing

“There is a sort of savage nobility about his firm reliance on his own bad taste.”

Admiring intellectual candour even while condemning the judgement it produces · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

• Character
• Criticism
• Humour

“I never yet heard it maintained by the wildest enthusiast for Classics that the standard of morality or even of amiability is higher among classical scholars than among men of science.”

Questioning claims that scholarship necessarily improves moral character · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

• Character
• Education
• Morality

“You are right in supposing that I do not look with favour on the collecting of first editions and autographs, but it is a vice which is sometimes found in otherwise virtuous persons.”

Teasing collectors while politely acknowledging their enthusiasm · Letter to an autograph collector

• Books
• Character
• Humour

“Most men are rather stupid, and most of those who are not stupid are, consequently, rather vain.”

An acid example of Housman's characteristic scholarly wit · Lecture, The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism, 1921

• Character
• Humanity
• Wit

“I have always been very quiet and bashful and a great mystery in my own place.”

A candid description of the reserve that marked him from childhood · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Character
• Identity
• Silence

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut!”

A comic rule about accountability and the consequences of extravagant promises · Personal rule sent to Charles Scribner IV

• Character
• Discipline
• Humour

“Grace under pressure.”

His celebrated shorthand for courage expressed through composure in adversity · Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 20 April 1926

• Character
• Courage
• Strength

“Then the writer must be intelligent and disinterested and above all he must survive.”

Linking literary achievement with judgement, detachment and the endurance needed to finish one's work · Non-fiction, Green Hills of Africa

• Character
• Perseverance
• Writing

“It is not intellect that has brought this about; less has it been due to education; it has been due to character and character is the expression of habits and ideas.”

Emphasising the formative power of inherited habits and shared ideas · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921

• Character
• Culture
• Education

“It may happen that poets will be made more often by their sins than by their virtues.”

Suggesting that artistic development may arise from imperfection and transgression rather than virtue · Essay, Why the Blind Man in Ancient Times Was Made a Poet

• Character
• Experience
• Poetry

“I had not learned what sweetness, what rhythmic movement, there is in those who have become the joy that is themselves.”

Celebrating the grace of people whose outward life expresses an integrated inner self · Essay, The Tree of Life

• Character
• Identity
• Joy

“I am naturally earnest, in earnest about whatever thing I do, and little able to write about one thing while I think of another.”

A concise statement of the concentration and seriousness he brought to creative work · Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, 30 April 1845

• Character
• Sincerity
• Writing

“Self-sacrifice is not a formula, nor is chivalry, and when all is said & done, there is such a thing as poetic justice.”

Defending moral intuitions that cannot be reduced to abstract systems · Letter to George Bernard Shaw, 1891

• Character
• Justice
• Morality

“Mere dogmas seldom explain human character.”

Warning against reducing complex people to fixed theories · Letter to George Bernard Shaw, 1891

• Belief
• Character
• Understanding

“Only those are worthy of love who carry within themselves the reason for being loved.”

Original: Ибо те одни достойны быть любимы, которые в себе самих заключают причину, побуждающую их любить. — Affection, in this view, should arise from qualities genuinely present in the person loved. · Essay “On Friendship”, 1792 (Russian)

• Character
• Love
• Wisdom

“Friendship, then, should rest on the strongest foundation: respect, strengthened by knowledge of another's worth, a foundation that cannot be shaken.”

Original: Итак, должно утверждать дружество на крепчайшем основании; почтение, подкрепляемое знанием достоинств; вот основание, которое никогда не может поколебаться. — He makes lasting friendship depend on informed respect rather than passing affection. · Essay “On Friendship”, 1792 (Russian)

• Character
• Friendship
• Respect

“We're like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made the father such a man.”

Reflecting on the paradox that prosperity can remove the difficulties through which character was formed · Television interview, Meet the Press, 22 March 1959

• Character
• Society
• Struggle

“You've been broadened and enlarged to where you can listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

Defining education partly as the confidence and self-command required to hear challenging ideas · Commencement address, Dartmouth College, 1955

• Character
• Education
• Understanding

“People will tell you that freedom lies in being cautious. Freedom lies in being bold.”

Linking genuine freedom with the courage to act rather than excessive caution · Television interview with Bela Kornitzer, 1952

• Character
• Courage
• Freedom

“Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.”

Rejecting unrealistically flawless characters in favour of recognisable human imperfection · Letter to Fanny Knight, 23 March 1817

• Character
• Humour
• Writing

“I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.”

Her reported intention when creating the deliberately imperfect heroine of Emma · Conversation, recalled in A Memoir of Jane Austen

• Character
• Originality
• Writing