Best 14098 quotes in «character quotes» category

Evil denotes the lack of good. Not every absence of good is an evil, for absence may be taken either in a purely negative or in aprivative sense. Mere negation does not display the character of evil, otherwise nonexistents would be evil and moreover, a thing would be evil for not possessing the goodness of something else, which would mean that man is bad for not having the strength of a lion or the speed of a wild goat. But what is evil is privation; in this sense blindness means the privation of sight.

'Evil' is quite a blanket term. People aren't the demonic characters we would like them to be sometimes.

Evil is such a simplistic way to describe any character, be it Iago or Caliban, or any character from history.

Exactly who is this God character who is said to be all-powerful yet needs to hire lawyers to take us to court? Isn't he miffed when someone he had always considered to be a true follower turns to the legal system rather than to prayer? Why would the faithful risk making God look ridiculous by losing a trial on Earth when he is certain to win every trial in heaven?

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

Examine the platforms of both parties. Examine the character of both parties. Get down on your knees. Say, Lord, help me make this decision. And then go vote.

Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.

Excellence is never an accident.

Executive presence has to do with the whole of the person. It's much more than presentation skill, charisma or savvy. It shows up in three dimensions of the leader's persona - character, substance and style. It's now clear that for a leader to influence and make an impact, it is important for them to also develop qualities such as authenticity, integrity, resonance, practical wisdom, and vision.

Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.

Excellence when concealed, differs but little from buried worthlessness. [Lat., Paullum sepultae distat inertiae Celata virtus.]

Expeditions can greatly contribute towards building strength of character. Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim tells us that it is necessary for a youth to experience events which 'reveal the inner worth of the man; the edge of his temper; the fibre of his stuff; the quality of his resistance; the secret truth of his pretences, not only to himself but others.

Experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a state depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men; for the nation is only the aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of personal, improvement.

Extending his senses, Lorkin tried again to hear his mother’s surface thoughts. What he picked up seemed too out of character, however. He must be imagining it. Though…it was also odd that he would imagine his mother thinking such a string of curse words.

Exposing characters and their shortcomings gives me great comfort. Its always great to write about someone more mixed up than yourself.

Expressing political opinion can be a powerful way to establish a character's voice when writing fiction.

Eyes lie if you ever look into them for the character of the person.

Facebook and Twitter and these other social sites bring every, I mean, 140 characters. I mean, I'm on Twitter and I have fun. But I don't think anybody learns anything about me as a person.

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself.

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.

Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this. It doesnt help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes todays intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.

Failures not a bad thing. It builds character. It makes you stronger.

Faith, as the Bible teaches it, is faith in God coming against everything that contradicts Him- a faith that says, “I will remain true to God’s character whatever He may do.” The highest and the greatest expression of faith in the whole Bible is- “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them. He must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

Faith is the foundation upon which a godlike character is built. It is a prerequisite for all other virtues.

Faith in God... produces character; character will produce courage, courage to face the challenges of the day.

Faith in the hereafter is as necessary for the intellectual as the moral character; and to the man of letters, as well as to the Christian, the present forms but the slightest portion of his existence.

Faith never knows where it is being led, it knows and loves the One Who is leading. Faith is not resignation to a power we do not know; faith is committal to One Whose character we do know because it has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.

Fame is also a test of character at times... Sometimes I pass the test; sometimes I'm a pain in the ass. Sometimes I'm like, Oh, God! I just want to buy some tampons!

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.

Fame is what you have taken, / Character's what you give; / When to this truth you waken, / Then you begin to live.

Fantasy stories will always be popular, as there are always readers who are willing to escape, freely, to the worlds that the authors create, and spend time with the characters we give life to.

Fans believe they have a relationship with you, either through your TV character or, more reasonably, through the tweets you may have exchanged. In a way, you have gotten to know them. You learn about people's kids, families, pets.

Fatal illness has always been viewed as a test of moral character, but in the nineteenth century there is a great reluctance to let anybody flunk the test.

Fear has disappeared. No more fear. In Asia, it is different. They've discovered again the fear and the psychology of the characters. Without psychology, the horror film doesn't exist.

Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom - it doesn't have the same factory machinery up and running, teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations - but that doesn't explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective.

Fellows of colleges in the universities are in one sense the recipients of alms, because they receive funds which originally were of an eleemosynary character.

Few people have definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character in the universe, and of the inadequacy of fully to match it [to] the peculiar systems that he knows.

Few characters in history are indispensable.

Few people realize the profound part angelic forces play in human events.

Few novels truly deserve the description 'rollicking' in the way Mary Novik's Conceit does. A hearty, boiling stew of a novel, served up in rich old-fashioned story-telling. Novik lures her readers into the streets of a bawdy seventeenth-century London with a nudge and a wink and keeps them there with her infectious love of detail and character. A raunchy, hugely entertaining read that will leave you at once satiated and hungry for more.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

Few persons are made of such strong fiber that they will make a costly outlay when surface work will pass as well in the market.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

Feydeau's one rule of playwriting: Character A: My life is perfect as long as I don't see Character B. Knock Knock. Enter Character B.

Fiction doesn't appeal to me because it can describe physical appearances exhaustively or because it can offer access to the inner depths of an array of human characters - neither that kind of "realism" of bodily surfaces nor of individual psychologies seems particularly realistic to me.

Fictional characters exist in only two places, neither of which is on the printed page. They exist, first, in the mind of the writer and, second, in the mind of the reader.

Fiction writers learn about the development of metaphor, the use of rhythm, the way that language is compacted in order to express the feelings of - express their own feelings and the feelings of their characters.

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.