“Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Do you have more details about the quote "Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street." by Elbert Hubbard?
Elbert Hubbard photo
Elbert Hubbard 141
American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el … 1856–1915

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“A man may be reputed an able man this year, and yet be a beggar the next; it is a misfortune that happens to many men, and his former reputation will signify nothing.”

John Holt (Lord Chief Justice) (1642–1710) English lawyer and Lord Chief Justice of England

Reg. v. Swendsen (1702), 14 How. St. Tr. 596.

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“Perhaps a man's character was like a tree, and his reputation like its shadow; the shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

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As quoted in "Lincoln's Imagination" by Noah Brooks, in Scribner's Monthly (August 1879), p. 586 http://books.google.com/books?id=jOoGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA586
Posthumous attributions
Variant: Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

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“The most important thing for a young man is to establish a credit — a reputation, character.”

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“War is a serious game in which a man risks his reputation, his troops, and his country. A sensible man will search himself to know whether or not he is fitted for the trade.”

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“Character is what God and the angels know of us; reputation is what men and women think of us.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Anonymous author; this is attributed to Mann, in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1998) edited by Connie Robertson, and similar statements are often attributed to Thomas Paine, but the earliest published variant of such a declaration seem to be in an anecdote about an anonymous Boston woman in 1889:
I have the reputation of being of good moral character. But you know reputation is what people think of us, while character is what God and the angels know of us, and that I don't want to tell.
Anonymous Boston woman, as quoted in Current Opinion (1889)
There is a very great difference — is there not? — between the temporal and the eternal judgments, a very great difference between a man's reputation and a man's character, for reputation is what men think and say of us, while character is what God and the angels know of us.
Price Collier, in Sermons (1892)
Reputation is what men and women think of us, character is what God and the angels know of us.
Attributed to Thomas Paine in A Dictionary of Terms, Phrases,and Quotations (1895) edited by Henry Percy Smith, and Helen Kendrick Johnson
Misattributed

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“What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”

Variant: I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare - there were holes at his elbows; the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.
Source: Les Misérables

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