quotations about reputation
Makin' mistakes ain't a crime, you know. What's the use of having a reputation if you can't ruin it every now and then?
SIMONE ELKELES
Perfect Chemistry
Reputation hangs a man.
ARIAS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The gaining of reputation is but the revealing of our virtue and worth to the best advantage.
JOSEPH HAYDN
attributed, Day's Collacon
It takes little or nothing to undo reputations, the merest trifle makes and remakes them, it is simply a question of finding the best means of engaging the confidence or interest of those who are to become one's unsuspecting echoes or accomplices.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
Would you be esteemed? Live with persons that are estimable.
MARQUISE DE LAMBERT
An Essay on Friendship
The art of being able to make a good use of moderate abilities wins esteem and often confers more reputation than real merit.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
There are some wounds given to reputation that are like the wounds of an envenomed arrow; where we irritate and enlarge the orifice while we extract the bearded weapon; yet cannot the cure be completed otherwise.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation; that away,
Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard II
It is not so easy to obtain a reputation by a perfect work as to enhance the value of an indifferent one by a reputation already acquired.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
Reputation and character may be in harmony, but they frequently are as opposite as light and darkness. Many a scoundrel has had a reputation for nobility.
A. R. CALHOON
How to Get On in the World
Reputation is the social distillation of other people's opinion.
TOM SLEE
What's Yours Is Mine
A man can get a reputation from very small things.
SOPHOCLES
fragment, Inachus
Reputation with the people depends upon chance, unless they are guided by those above them. They are but the keepers, as it were, of the lottery which fortune sets up for renown; upon which fame is bound to attend with her trumpet, and sound when men draw the prizes.
JOHN DENNIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Reputation is nice and precious; like coin, it is kept bright by use; and yet, too much use wears it away; when worn, its value is lessened; when tarnished, its lustre is with difficulty restored; very brilliant reputations always lose a portion of their brilliancy.
GAETANO MELZI
attributed, Day's Collacon
How commonly are characters dissected, with apparently the only object of displaying the power of malignant acumen possessed by the operator, as though another's reputation were made for no other purpose than the gratification of the meanest and most unlovely attributes of the human heart!
FRANCIS WAYLAND
The Elements of Moral Science
I have offended reputation,
A most unnoble swerving.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Antony and Cleopatra
Knowing how important reputation is, we are also concerned to establish, maintain, or shore up our own reputations, because that will affect whether others trust us and, therefore, whether they are willing to enter into exchanges with us.
ROSEMARY L. HOPCROFT
Sociology: A Biosocial Introduction
The blaze of a reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
letter to Mrs. Thrale, May 1, 1780
The easiest way to get a reputation is to go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Notebooks
But further, a man whose extraordinary reputation thus lifts him up to the notice and Observation of mankind, draws a multitude of eyes upon him that will narrowly inspect every part of him.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, No. 256