A reputation for a thousand years may depend upon the conduct of a single moment.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.
Reputations rise and fall almost as regularly as the tides.
Reputation is a timely subject, now that nobody has one.
Our reputation is more important than the last hundred million dollars.
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
Reputation is favorable notoriety as distinguished from fame, which is permanent approval of great deeds and noble thoughts by the best intelligence of mankind.
Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.
Some carry the burden of bitterness and resentfulness for many years.
The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.
Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.