“Character is the entity, the individuality of the person, shining from every window of the soul, either as a beam of purity, or as a clouded ray that betrays the impurity within.”

— William Jennings Bryan

Address at Illinois College (1881)
Context: Character is the entity, the individuality of the person, shining from every window of the soul, either as a beam of purity, or as a clouded ray that betrays the impurity within. The contest between light and darkness, right and wrong, goes on; day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, our characters are being formed, and this is the all-important question which comes to us in accents ever growing fainter as we journey from the cradle to the grave, "Shall those characters be good or bad?"

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Character is the entity, the individuality of the person, shining from every window of the soul, either as a beam of pu…" by William Jennings Bryan?

William Jennings Bryan 33

United States Secretary of State 1860–1925

Related quotes

“Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life,
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!”

George Gordon Byron book The Bride of Abydos

Canto II, stanza 20.
The Bride of Abydos (1813)

“Truth is naturally universal… and shines into many different windows, though many are clouded.”

Anya Seton book Green Darkness

Source: Green Darkness

“The soul is imprisoned in the body, and the Lord… built two windows in the wall of the prison… Unfortunately, the windows have curtains—eyelids; and a man whose soul is impure, feeling himself scrutinized, lets down the curtains and conceals the soul.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Mesiras Nefesh, quoted in M. Samuel. Prince of the Ghetto. Alfred A. Knopf, 1948, p. 22.

“So sings the world's fond slave! so flies the dream
Of life's gay morn; so sinks the meteor ray
Of fancy into darkness; and no beam
Of purer light shines on the wanderer's way.”

Francis Scott Key (1779–1843) American lawyer and poet

"On Reading Fawcett's Lines On Revisiting Scenes Of Early Life" in Poems of the Late Francis Scott Key, Esq. (1857), p. 87.
Context: p>So sings the world's fond slave! so flies the dream
Of life's gay morn; so sinks the meteor ray
Of fancy into darkness; and no beam
Of purer light shines on the wanderer's way.So sings not he who soars on other wings
Than fancy lends him; whom a cheering faith
Warms and sustains, and whose freed spirit springs
To joys that bloom beyond the reach of death.And thou would'st live again! again dream o'er
The wild and feverish visions of thy youth
Again to wake in sorrow, and deplore
Thy wanderings from the peaceful paths of truth! Yet yield not to despair! be born again,
And thou shalt live a life of joy and peace,
Shall die a death of triumph, and thy strain
Be changed to notes of rapture ne'er to cease.</p