Best 14098 quotes in «character quotes» category

The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.

The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.

The only way to live in the midst of inharmonious influences is to strengthen the will power and endure all things, yet keeping fineness of character and nobility of manner together with an everlasting heart full of love.

The only way to change the world is to change the main character of our story - the one we believe that we are. If we change the main character, if we respect ourselves, then just like magic, all the secondary characters will change. We can only give what we have, and if we don't respect ourselves, how can we respect others?

the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.

The only way to truly know a person is to argue with them. For when they argue in full swing, then they reveal their true character.

The only way we can be of use to God is to let Him take us through the crooks and crannies of our own characters.

The orator, who may be silent without danger, may praise without difficulty and without reluctance; and posterity will confess that the character of Theodosius might furnish the subject of a sincere and ample panegyric. The wisdom of his laws and the success of his arms rendered his administration respectable in the eyes both of his subjects and of his enemies. He loved and practised the virtues of domestic life, which seldom hold their residence in the palaces of kings.

The opportunities I've had to play really complex characters - which haven't been a lot, but some - you never get over them.

The opposite of success is not failure. Unsuccessful efforts are not failures unless they so discourage you that you abandon further efforts to achieve your goal. Even then, the venture or effort may be a failure but you are not. Failure is an event not a character trait.

The opulence of Wilde is a bit too florid for Sherlock, who is a much darker character, ... fascinated by the human condition, but also overwhelmed by it.

The opposing missions of the various characters create the plot.

The order of ... successive generations is indeed much more clearly proved than many a legend which has assumed the character of history in the hands of man; for the geological record is the work of God.

The orgy of thieving in Iraq has more to do with the character of the people than the absence of restraining troops. And to think that good, decent, law-abiding young British and American men and women laid down their lives to liberate this thieving mob.

Theoretically, the actor ought to be more sound in mind and body than other people, since he learns to understand the psychological problems of human beings when putting his own passions, his loves, fears, and rages to work in the service of the characters he plays. He will learn to face himself, to hide nothing from himself- and to do so takes AN INSATIABLE CURIOSITY ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION

The other cool thing is, even with Jessica [Johnson], or Daredevil, I had taken a break from those characters for a while in the comics, so I can enjoy the shows without the agita. I completely love the Daredevil show. I feel no physical connection to it, because it was 10 years ago since I wrote that comic, so I can just enjoy it. And when people connect it in a positive way to me, I go, "Well, that's very f - king flattering!

The other main difference between film and television is that you have the opportunity to flush out a character, over a longer period of time. Whereas with a film, you're confined to two or three hours, or whatever it may be.

The other thing about the Nights is that it is quite racist. One parentheses is that I think this is one of the negative things that appeal to people, that The Arabian Nights could be used as a disguise for racism. It suited the West. You could smuggle racism into children's literature, you see. The African magician in the story of Aladdin, he's labeled explicitly as the "African Magician." He's not a character but a stereotype, and a lot of this got into nursery literature in this Oriental disguise.

The other thing that I got back then - the Parker novels have never had much of anything to do with race. There have been a few black characters here and there, but the first batch of books back then, I got a lot of letters from urban black guys in their 20s, 30s, 40s. What were they seeing that they were reacting to? And I think I finally figured it out - at that time, they were guys who felt very excluded from society, that they had been rejected by the greater American world.

The overman...Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment.

The outsider hero is hero riding into town, he's the gunslinger, shame - the same thing, he didn't want to do it anymore, he wanted to live a different life but part of who you are sort of haunts you and you can't run away from evil and if you have special skills, and most people are mistreated, which is unfortunately in our world, we always need an equalizer, that type of character to come to our rescue.

The outward is only the outside of that which is within. Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by them; they are their true clothes.

The parent reads the book. The kid reads the book and then they can talk about the characters instead of talking about themselves. You know there's a connection even if you don't talk about it when you read the same books.

The passion has never left me. I live as two people - myself, Dan Fante, and Bruno Dante or Mickey Di Salvo, or whoever I say I am in one of my books. I can tap that Bruno character any time I need to. He lives inside me like a quiet, simmering pool of magma. Years ago I stopped feeding him with booze and he was kind enough to stop trying to kill me. That's our truce.

The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most loves to close upon.

The pastoral labours of the archbishop of Constantinople provoked and gradually united against him two sorts of enemies; the aspiring clergy, who envied his success, and the obstinate sinners, who were offended by his reproofs. When Chrysostom thundered from the pulpit of St. Sophia against the degeneracy of the Christians, his shafts were spent among the crowd, without wounding or even marking the character of any individual.

The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.

The people of Baltimore are great. I love Baltimore. What I looked forward to, every year, was getting a new apartment in a different part of town and hanging out. People started to see you in the character that you were, so everyone thought I was real police.

The people of Canada do not wish as a result of mass immigration to make a fundamental alteration in the character of our population. Large scale immigration from the Orient would change the fundamental composition of the Canadian population.

The peculiar striations that define someone's personality are too numerous to know, no matter how close the observer. A person we think we know can suddenly become someone else when previously hidden strands of his character are called to the fore by circumstance.

The people "have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge- I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers.

The people I've respected most in the industry over the years - Paul Newman, for instance. I just loved the way he handled growing old on-screen. It's understanding that you're now basically a character actor.

The people in this house, I felt, and I included myself, were like characters each from a different grim and gruesome fairy tale. None of us was in the same story. We were all grotesques, and self-riveted, but in separate narratives, and so our interactions seemed weird and richly meaningless, like the characters in a Tennessee Williams play, with their bursting unimportant, but spell-bindingly mad speeches.

The people who really have character make deep, unshakable connections to something outside themselves.

The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.

The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.

The persons whom you have idolized can never, in the end, be ungrateful, and, probably, at the time of retreat they still do justice to your heart. But, so long as you must draw persons too near you, a temporary recoil is sure to follow. It is the character striving to defend itself from a heating and suffocating action upon it.

The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, only on its edge; as the chemicalenergy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum.

The person you are (in total, at that moment in time) is what creates the story you're writing. It's infused in every piece of punctuation, in the plot, in the most minor character who crosses the page. It's all your voice.

The petty cares, the minute anxieties, the infinite littles which go to make up the sum of human experience, like the invisible granules of powder, give the last and highest polish to a character.

The person who builds a character makes foes.

The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character.

The Pixar people continuously amaze me. They come up with something that actually looks as though it takes place in this happy, real-world. Every plot line is not just plausible, but oddly authentic. The stories are full of adventure, humor and love. The characters are written with great human dimension. I don't know how they do it but they astound me.

The place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our circle of influence, our own character.

The plot is very important because writers have to play fair with their readers, but no one would care about the plot if the character work wasn't there. So, basically every book I work on starts with me thinking not just about the bad thing that's going to happen, but how that bad thing is going to ripple through the community, the family of the victim, and the lives of the investigators. I am keenly aware when I'm working that the crimes I am writing about have happened to real people. I take that very seriously.

The play is on top of me all the time, and I am constantly thinking about it. Even when I leave the theatre, I'll mumble the lines to myself or think about the way the character walks or holds himself.

The poetic beauty of Davy's mind never seems to have left him. To that circumstance I would ascribe the distinguishing feature in his character, and in his discoveries,-a vivid imagination sketching out new tracts in regions unexplored, for the judgement to select those leading to the recesses of abstract truth.

The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves itto the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small.

The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.

The poetics of the oppressed is essentially the poetics of liberation: the spectator no longer delegates power to the characters either to think or to act in his place. The spectator frees himself; he thinks and acts for himself! Theatre is action!