Quotes about personality
A collection of quotes on the topic of personality.
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„About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort.
I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead.“
— Kurt Vonnegut, book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
In A Man Without a Country (2005) p. 80–81 Vonnegut makes a very similar statement:
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)
Context: About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort.
I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead. My German-American ancestors, the earliest of whom settled in our Middle West about the time of our Civil War, called themselves "Freethinkers," which is the same sort of thing. My great grandfather Clemens Vonnegut wrote, for example, "If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?"
I myself have written, "If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake."
„He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost.“
— Osamu Dazai, book No Longer Human
Third Notebook: Part Two
Source: No Longer Human
„Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.“
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Hungarian American psychologist 1934
Source: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
„Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.“
— T.S. Eliot, book Tradition and the Individual Talent
Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Context: The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him "personal." Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
„We are not the person other people wish we were. We are who we decide to be.“
— Paulo Coelho, book Aleph
Source: Aleph (2011)
„It is better to be a live jackal than a dead lion--for jackals, not men. Men who have the moral courage to fight intelligently for freedom have the best prospects of avoiding the fate of both live jackals and dead lions. Survival is not the be-all and end-all of a life worthy of man. Sometimes the worst we can know about a man is that he has survived. Those who say life is worth living at any price have already written for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person they will not betray to stay alive. Man's vocation should be the use of the arts of intelligence in behalf of human freedom.“
— Sidney Hook American philosopher 1902 - 1989
Out of Step (1985)
„If there was anything her short life had taught her, it was that a person must be tough. Otherwise, you were had.“
— Katherine Paterson, book The Great Gilly Hopkins
Gilly Hopkins
The Great Gilly Hopkins (1978)
„It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.“
— Lewis Carroll, book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Source: Alice in Wonderland
„I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day.“
— Arthur Miller playwright from the United States 1915 - 2005
Paris Review (Summer 1966)
Context: Success, instead of giving freedom of choice, becomes a way of life. There's no country I've been to where people, when you come into a room and sit down with them, so often ask you, "What do you do?" And, being American, many's the time I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day.
„It is quite possible--overwhelmingly probable, one might guess--that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology“
— Noam Chomsky american linguist, philosopher and activist 1928
„The most temperate of persons is the one who controls hismself, and in doubtful events is self-contained.“
— Hasan al-Askari Eleventh of the Twelve Imams 846 - 874
Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 373
General
„When someone's body can no longer perform its functions in the natural world in response to the thoughts and affections of its spirit (which it derives from the spiritual world), then we say that the individual has died. This happens when the lungs' breathing and the heart's systolic motion have ceased. The person, though, has not died at all. We are only separated from the physical nature that was useful to us in the world. The essential person is actually still alive. I say that the essential person is still alive because we are not people because of our bodies but because of our spirits. After all, it is the spirit within us that thinks, and thought and affection together make us the people we are. We can see, then, that when we die we simply move from one world into another. This is why in the inner meaning of the Bible, "death" means resurrection and a continuation of life.“
— Emanuel Swedenborg Swedish 18th century scientist and theologian 1688 - 1772
Heaven and Hell #445
„That a deep-rooted feeling of discontent pervades the masses, none can deny; that there is a just cause for it, must be admitted. The old cry, “These agitators are stirring up a feeling of dissatisfaction among working men and they should be suppressed,” will not avail now. Every thinking person knows that the agitator did not throw two millions of men out of employment. The man that reads such paragraphs as this will not lay the blame of it at the door of the agitator:
“Mrs. Sarah Jane Geary, an Englishwoman, residing in this city, committed suicide a few days since. Her husband is a miner, and, owing to the frequent suspensions of business in the mines during the past winter, his meager earnings were insufficient to support the family. The fact preyed on Mrs. Geary’s mind, and she resolved to end her life, that her children might receive her share of the food, otherwise they would go hungry.”“
— Terence V. Powderly American mayor 1849 - 1924
"The Army of the Discontented," http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=nora;cc=nora;g=moagrp;xc=1;q1=The%20Army%20of%20the%20Discontented;rgn=full%20text;cite1=Powderly;cite1restrict=author;view=image;seq=0381;idno=nora0140-4;node=nora0140-4%3A8 North American Review, vol. 140, whole no. 341 (April 1885), p. 371.
„I'm very proud [to be part Italian] … Although I don't eat a lot of Italian things, because I'm vegan. … I love animals more than I love most people, not kidding. But I am a firm believer in eating a full plant-based, whole food diet that can expand your life length and make you an all-round happier person. It is tricky dining out, but I just stick to what I know – veggies, fruit and salad – then when I get home I'll have something else.“
— Ariana Grande American singer-songwriter 1993
"Ariana Grande: "I love animals more than I love most people, not kidding"" https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/ariana-grande-i-love-animals-4754625, interview with the Mirror (5 December 2014)
„One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests. “
— Anders Behring Breivik Norwegian mass murderer 1979
„I am a hard person to love but when I love, I love really hard.“
— Tupac Shakur rapper and actor 1971 - 1996