Great Throughts Treasury

"A noble person covets the reputation of being slow in word but prompt in deed." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"Time goes by: reputation increases, ability decline." - Dag Hammarskjöld

"Time goes by; reputation increases, ability declines." - Dag Hammarskjöld

"Never expect to find perfection in men, in my commerce with my contemporaries I have found much human virtue. I have seen not a little public spirit; a real subordination of interest to duty; and a decent and regulated sensibility to honest fame and reputation. The age unquestionably produces daring profligates and insidious hypocrites. What then? Am I not to avail myself of whatever good is to be found in the world because of the mixture of evil that will always be in it? The smallness of the quantity in currency only heightens the value. They who raise suspicions on the good, on account of the behavior of ill men, are of the party of the latter." - Edmund Burke

"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street." - Elbert Green Hubbard

"The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests." - Epicurus NULL

"Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests." - Epicurus NULL

"It is little wonder that rape is one of the least-reported crimes. Perhaps it is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused and, in reality, it is she who must prove her good reputation, her mental soundness, and her impeccable propriety." - Freda Adler

"Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week." - George Bernard Shaw

"Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your reputation. Be not apt to relate news, if you know not the truth thereof. Speak no evil of the absent, for it is unjust. Undertake not what you cannot perform, be be careful to keep your promise. There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth, and pursue it steadily. Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry and frugality are necessary to make us a great and happy nation." - George Washington

"Associate with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation, for it is better to be alone than in bad company." - George Washington

"Escaping with your reputation is better than escaping with your property." - Hausa Proverbs

"A man's character is the reality of himself. His reputation is the opinion others have formed of him. Character is in him; reputation is from other people - that is the substance, this is the shadow." - Henry Ward Beecher

"A reputation for good judgment, for fair dealing, for truth, and for rectitude, is itself a fortune." - Henry Ward Beecher

"Reputation is sometimes as wide as the horizon, when character is but the point of a needle. Character is what one really is; reputation what others believe him to be." - Henry Ward Beecher

"High original genius is always ridiculed on its first appearance; most of all by those who have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the established lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it." - James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude

"There are two ways of establishing your reputation - to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the former, because it will be invariably accompanied by the latter." - James Bryant Conant

"The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour." - Japanese Proverbs

"A man is what he is, not what men say he is. His character no man can touch. His character is what he is before his God and his Judge; and only himself can damage that. His reputation is what men say he is. That can be damaged; but reputation is for time, character is for eternity." - John B. Gough

"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, fully John Robert Wooden

"Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism - The right to criticize. The right to hold unpopular beliefs. The right to protest. The right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us does not? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in. The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as Communists or Fascists by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what is used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others. The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed." - Margaret Chase Smith

"A superior man is ashamed of a reputation beyond his merits." - Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL

"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." - Mignon McLaughlin

"It is awful to look into the mind of man and see how free we are, to what frightful excesses our vices may run under the whited wall of a respectable reputation. Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet, then all things are at risk. There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow; thee is not any literary reputation, nor the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Money is like the reputation for ability - more easily made than kept." -

"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences." - Susan B. Anthony, fully Susan Brownell Anthony

"Reputation serves to Virtue, as Light does to a Picture." - Thomas Fuller

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"A man’s reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof." - William Hazlitt

"Reputation is... oft got without merit and lost without deserving." - William Shakespeare

"The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation." - William Shakespeare

"All the worlds a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. At first the infant, mewling and puking in the nurses arms. Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school. And then the lover, sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress eyebrow. Then a soldier, full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannons mouth. And then the justice, in fair round belly with good capon lind, with eyes severe and beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances; and so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon dotard, with spectacles on nose and pouch on side, his youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide for his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, turning again toward childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing. As You Like It (Jaques at II, vii)" - William Shakespeare

"First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it. " - David Ogilvy

"Concealed talent brings no reputation. " - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

"Open your purse and your mouth cautiously; and your stock of wealth and reputation shall, at least in repute, be great. " - Johann Georg Zimmermann

"Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone, which is to say on prediction alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced. But that can happen, paradoxically, only if scientists disavow the certainty and precision that they normally insist on. Above all, we need to learn to act decisively to forestall predicted perils, even while knowing that they may never materialize. We must take action, in a manner of speaking, to preserve our ignorance. There are perils that we can be certain of avoiding only at the cost of never knowing with certainty that they were real." - Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell

"A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was." - Joseph Hall

"It ain't often that a man's reputation outlasts his money." - Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek

"One man does not assert the truth which he knows, because he feels himself bound to the people with whom he is engaged; another, because the truth might deprive him of the profitable position by which he maintains his family; a third, because he desires to attain reputation and authority, and then use them in the service of mankind; a fourth, because he does not wish to destroy old sacred traditions; a fifth, because he has no desire to offend people; a sixth, because the expression of the truth would arouse persecution, and disturb the excellent social activity to which he has devoted himself. One serves as emperor, king, minister, government functionary, or soldier, and assures himself and others that the deviation from truth indispensable to his condition is redeemed by the good he does. Another, who fulfills the duties of a spiritual pastor, does not in the depths of his soul believe all he teaches, but permits the deviation from truth in view of the good he does. A third instructs men by means of literature, and notwithstanding the silence he must observe with regard to the whole truth, in order not to stir up the government and society against himself, has no doubt as to the good he does. A fourth struggles resolutely with the existing order as revolutionist or anarchist, and is quite assured that the aims he pursues are so beneficial that the neglect of the truth, or even of the falsehood, by silence, indispensable to the success of his activity, does not destroy the utility of his work. In order that the conditions of a life contrary to the consciousness of humanity should change and be replaced by one which is in accord with it, the outworn public opinion must be superseded by a new and living one. And in order that the old outworn opinion should yield its place to the new living one, all who are conscious of the new requirements of existence should openly express them. And yet all those who are conscious of these new requirements, one in the name of one thing, and one in the name of another, not only pass them over in silence, but both by word and deed attest their exact opposites." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

"You can't build a reputation on what you intend to do." - Liz Smith, formally Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Smith, aka The Grand Dame of Dish

"Kindly words do not enter so deeply into men as a reputation for kindness" - Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL

"Kindly words do not enter so deeply into men as a reputation for kindness." - Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL

"Kindly words do not enter so deeply into men as a reputation for kindness." - Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL

"We’d all like a reputation for generosity, and we’d all like to buy it cheap." - Mignon McLaughlin

"The reputation of a woman may be compared to a mirror, shining and bright, but liable to be sullied by every breath that comes near it." - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

"Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom." - Myrtle Reed

"Self esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves." - Nathaniel Branden

"The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other. A wise man, therefore, will be more anxious to deserve a fair name than to possess it, and this will teach him so to live as not to be afraid to die." - Nathaniel Cotton

"A prince must be prudent enough to know how to escape the bad reputation of those vices that would lose the state for him, and must protect himself from those that will not lose it for him, if this is possible; but if he cannot, he need not concern himself unduly if he ignores these less serious vices." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli