Quotes about personality (10000 quotes, page 31)

“Sometimes the enemy is just one person who will bring down a kingdom.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Kiss of Deception

Source: The Kiss of Deception

“You have ordinary moments and ordinary moments and more ordinary moments, and then, suddenly, there is something monumental right there. You have past and future colliding in the present, your own personal Big Bang, and nothing will ever be the same.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Stay

Past , Future

“This is what it means to live on. When granted hope, a person uses it as fuel, as a guidepost to life. It is impossible to live without hope.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Life , Hope

“A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Variants (Many of MLKs' speeches were delivered many times with slight variants): An Individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment: Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'
As quoted in The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Coretta Scott King, Second Edition (2011), Ch. "Community of Man", p. 3
1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)

Life , People , Problem

“I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Pain

“It's said that a wise person learns from his mistakes. A wiser one learns from others' mistakes. But the wisest person of all learns from others's successes.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Source: Leadership Gold: Lessons I've Learned from a Lifetime of Leading

Learning , Success

“If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

“You never know what's in a person's heart until they're tested, do you?”

Fannie Flagg book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Source: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Heart

“Jem spoke with enormous care; talking to Will about anything personal was like trying not to startle away a wild animal.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Animals

“Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Freedom

“I did not always think he was right nor did he always think I was right but we were each the person the other trusted.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Thinking

“Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Love , Understanding , Passion

“Nobody's easier to fool, than the person who is convinced that he is right.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Fools

“Perhaps I am the only person who, asked whether she were a witch or not, could truthfully say, "I do not know. I do know some very strange things have happened to me, or through me."

Lady Alice Rowhedge”

Norah Lofts (1904–1983) British writer

Source: Bless This House

“Every person's life is theirs by right. An individual's life can and must belong only to to himself, not to any society or community, or he is then but a slave.”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist

Life , Communication

“You never know the last time you’ll see a place. A person.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Time

“No person [should] walk out into the world to begin the day until he or she has stood beneath the cross to receive God’s love.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Love , God , World

“The more you love, the more you can love--and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Love , Time

“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

Freedom

“It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

War , Freedom

“A person walks into a room and says hello, and your life takes a course for which you are not prepared. It's a tiny moment (almost-but not quite-unremarkable), the beginning of a hundred thousand tiny moments and some larger ones.”

Anita Shreve (1946–2018) American writer

Source: Eden Close

Life

“All the talking in the world couldn't even prove you and the other person both saw the same color red.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Secret Vampire

World , Color

“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Source: Letters of Thomas Jefferson

Time

“She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music.
She had no friends, yet she was the friendliest person in school.”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

School , Music , Dance

“Nobody wants to live with a person who'll never be happy.”

François Lelord book Hector and the Search for Happiness

Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness

Happiness

“How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present?”

Milan Kundera book Identity

pg 40
Source: Identity (1998)

Feeling , Nostalgia , Suffering

“A person who doesn't learn from the past is an idiot, in my estimation.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Learning , Past

“Fear is a weakness. It makes a person lose her nerve and her cool. It makes people jumpy and organizations nervous, and when that happens, there is always a chance to take advantage.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

People , Fear , Chance

“Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only way to live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is free of the weight of the past [and the future].”

Alan Lightman book Einstein's Dreams

Source: Einstein's Dreams

Death , Way , Time , Past

“But hands are sacred things. Touch is personal, fingers of love, feelers of blind eyes, tongues of those who cannot talk…”

Keri Hulme book The Bone People

Source: The Bone People

Love

“She wished there was some place where she could go to hum it out loud. Some kind of music was too private to sing in a house cram fall of people. It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

People , Music , Singing , Housing

“Every person that you meet knows something you don't; learn from them.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Learning

“A person who says "it's your decision" is informing you that your decision sucks.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Six Rules of Maybe

Decision

“I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist… I am a person who does those things.”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

“Someone Hot is sometimes can't be the person they appear to be- except for their hotness… that cannot be denied.”

Meg Cabot book Avalon High

Source: Avalon High

Appearance

“Who are you if you lose your favorite person? Can you lose your favorite person without losing yourself? I reach for Stargirl and she's gone. I'm not me anymore.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

“Why is it that there are always these problems and misunderstandings between men and women? Surely it would have been better if God had made only one sort of person, and the children had come by some other means, with the rain perhaps.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Kalahari Typing School for Men

Source: The Kalahari Typing School for Men

Women , Men , God , Children

“But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose his head and do the most absurd things.”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the Orient Express

Source: Murder on the Orient Express

Nature

“There are always sides. There is always a winner and a loser. For every person who gets, there's someone who must give.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“I never wished I’d been a man. I always felt like a woman and wanted to be a woman. I wanted to be fulfilled professionally and personally, as a woman. There are some who might say I had penis envy, but I only had penis admiration.”

Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States

Envy

“You know, dulceata, there are times when I truly believe you are the most frightening person I know.
Thank you?”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Hunt the Moon

Time

“Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“You could just tell when a person belonged somewhere. That is something you can't fake, no matter how hard you try”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

“arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People

World , Way

“Oh, I'm not afraid of death! What have I got to live for after all? I suppose you believe it's very wrong to kill a person who has injured you-even if they've taken away everything you had in the world?”

Agatha Christie book Death on the Nile

Source: Death on the Nile

Death , World

“If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.”

Chaim Potok book The Chosen

Source: The Chosen

Learning

“You know what a storyteller is, don't you? It's a person that has a good memory who hopes other people don't.”

Sandra Dallas American writer

People , Hope , Memory

“Life is short, and potential studies infinite. We have a much better chance of accomplishing something significant when we follow our passionate interests and work in areas of deepest personal meaning.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Life , Study , Passion , Chance

“All his life he had wanted to be known by just one person. That’s what love was, he decided. Love was being known.”

Justin Cronin book The City of Mirrors

Source: The City of Mirrors

Love , Life

“One person can't hold anything, but two can have the world…”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: A Fistful of Charms

World

“I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008 http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/bushisms/2009/01/ws_greatest_hits.html http://www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/how-will-you-remember-george-w-bush
2000s, 2008

“It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it…”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“what i really want - and what i never get - is to be appreciated. do you know what it’s like to work so hard to make sure everyone’s happy, and to have not a single person recognize it”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Happiness

“She never inquired, but she never recoiled, either. This is a quality that I look for in a person, not recoiling.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“Then, bidding farewell to The Knick-Knack, I went to collect the few personal belongings which, at that time, I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Source: Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances: Three Short Novels

Travel , Cats , Solitude , Time

“This is not to say that I wasn't completely repulsed. I mean, I wasn't exactly proud that my stepbrother
was in there tongue wrestling with the second stupidest person in our class, after himself.”

Meg Cabot book Ninth Key

Source: Ninth Key

“Did you ever wonder if the person in the picture is the same one you see when you look in the mirror?" - "That's the eternal question, isn't it? Are we born who we are, or do we make ourselves that way?”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Way , Question

“No wonder I won the games. No decent person ever does.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Katniss, p. 117
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Game

“The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state… Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

Life , Men

“Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

describing his experiment with mescaline, p. 22-24
The Doors of Perception (1954)
Source: The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
Context: Reflecting on my experience, I find myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, “that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.” According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born—the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things. That which, in the language of religion, is called “this world” is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language. The various “other worlds,” with which human beings erratically make contact are so many elements in the totality of the awareness belonging to Mind at Large. Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate “spiritual exercises,” or through hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Through these permanent or temporary by-passes there flows, not indeed the perception “of everything that is happening everywhere in the universe” (for the by-pass does not abolish the reducing valve, which still excludes the total content of Mind at Large), but something more than, and above all something different from, the carefully selected utilitarian material which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a complete, or at least sufficient, picture of reality.

Universe

“It's not the easy things that let you get to know a person.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: How They Met, and Other Stories

“A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

For Men

“Do I look like the kind of person who wastes time turning goats into pin cushions?”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

Time

“Positive expectations are the mark of the superior personality.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Source: Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills that Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed

Attitude , Positive

“I am not a morning person.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

“If you are going to forgive a person, Liz decides, it is best to do it sooner rather than later. Later, Liz knows from experience, could be sooner than you thought.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Forgiveness

“I may not be the most likable person in the world, but I try not to upset people.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

People , World

“A bore or an uggo might manage not to get up anyone's nose, but if a girl's got brains and looks and personality, she's going to piss someone off, somewhere along the way.”

Tana French book Faithful Place

Source: Faithful Place

Way , Girl

“For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Fear and Trembling

Source: Fear and Trembling

Love , God , Faith

“How do you do that?” Mennis asked, frowning.
“What?”
“Smile so much.”
“Oh, I’m just a happy person.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Smile , Happiness

“True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection.”

Michael Singer (1945) American landscape architect

Source: The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

Parting

“Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds.”

Sherman Alexie book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Source: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“You should be convinced of the authenticity of what you have, but you must also be humble enough to say that we dont know everything. And since we dont know everything, we must accept that another person may believe something else.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: Have a Little Faith: a True Story

“Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

People

“It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Way , Feeling , Silence

“Small towns are sometimes like that; familiarity runs high, while regard for personal space is low, if nonexistent.”

Laurie Notaro American writer

Source: There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble

“It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. The thoughts alone suffice them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

Perfection

“The difference between a normal person and an insane one is precisely that the normal person has all the diseases of the mind, while the madman has only one!”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

Source: The Man Without Qualities

Disease

“Hell? Mr. Human Boy Person? Can you hear the Simi? Or are you dead? Hello? (Simi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Boy , Hell , Dead

“There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it - when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: Getting the Girl

World , Forgetting

“You can miss a person you've never known.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

“The problem, of course, was that [he] saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
Context: With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.

Love , Hate , World , Fear

“Letting go of randomness is one of the hardest decisions a person can make.”

Douglas Coupland Microserfs

Source: Microserfs

Decision

“As I get older I find that the friendships that are the most certain, ultimately, are the ones where you and the other person have made substantial amounts of money for one another.”

Jonathan Lethem (1964) Novelist, essayist, short story writer

Source: Men and Cartoons: Stories

Money , Friendship

“Sometimes when you hit send, you can imagine the message going straight into the person's heart. But other times, like this time, it feels like the words are merely falling into a well.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Feeling , Imagination , Time , Heart

“Being pretty-minded is simply the natural state for most people. Theyto be vapid and lazy and vain… and selfish. It only takes a twist to lock in that part of their personalities.”

Scott Westerfeld book Pretties

Source: Pretties

People , Nature , Parting , Selfishness

“All the action adventure girls have red hair," he said. "Whenever it is an independent girl, not a sidekick person, when she has her own mind or does as good as the guys, she has red hair.”

Marion Roach (1956) American writer

Source: Roots of Desire: The Myth, Meaning and Sexual Power of Red Hair

Guy , Girl

“What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Beauty , Music , Heart

“I am the kind of person who, if my feelings are unrequited, can completely detach from someone emotionally if I simply put my mind to it.”

Mindy Kaling book Why Not Me?

Source: Why Not Me?

Feeling

“a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment. Which is pretty amazing, when you actually think about it.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Variant: because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. no matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment.
Source: Just Listen

World , Thinking , Change

“An a priori decision to eliminate spiritual intelligence from consideration is no more justifiable than a decision to admit it by fiat or on faith. After all, once one includes the understanding of the personal realm within a study of intelligence, such human proclivities as the spiritual must legitimately be considered. There certainly are no easy grounds for a decision, but several other intelligences deal with phenomena other than sheer physical matter. If the abstract realm of mathematics constitutes a reasonable area of intelligence (and few would challenge that judgment), why not the abstract realm of the spiritual?”

Howard Gardner (1943) American developmental psychologist

Source: Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century, 1999, p. 51

Faith , Intelligence , Mathematics , Understanding

“I have come here to thank personally each Member of the Congress who labored so long and so valiantly to make this occasion come true today, and to make this bill a reality. I cannot mention all their names, for it would take much too long, but my gratitude; and that of this Nation; belongs to the 89th Congress. We are indebted, too, to the vision of the late beloved President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and to the support given to this measure by the then Attorney General and now Senator, Robert F. Kennedy. In the final days of consideration, this bill had no more able champion than the present Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach, who, with New York's own "Manny" Celler, and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Congressman Feighan of Ohio, and Senator Mansfield and Senator Dirksen constituting the leadership of the Senate, and Senator Javits, helped to guide this bill to passage, along with the help of the Members sitting in front of me today.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill (1965)

Support , Reality , Help , Gratitude

“In this country, some aristocratic families automatically categorize persons with dark skin, thick lips, and kinky hair as "Barias" [Amharic for slave]… let it be clear to everybody that I shall soon make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!”

Mengistu Haile Mariam (1937) Former dictator of Ethiopia

As quoted in Dr. Paulos Milkia's "Mengistu Haile Mariam: The Profile of a Dictator", reprinted from the February 1994 Ethiopian Review

Family , Country

“As for one-party rule, it was questioned neither by the Left Opposition nor by the Right [wing of the Communist party]. All were prisoners of their own doctrine and their own past: all had worked with a will to create the apparatus of violence that crushed them. Bukharin’ s hopeless attempt to form a league with Kamenev was no more than a pitiful epilogue to his career. In November 1929 the deviationists performed a public act of penance, but even this did not save them. Stalin’ s victory was complete; the collapse of the Bukharinite opposition meant the triumph of autocracy in the party and in the country. In December 1929 Stalin’ s fiftieth birthday was celebrated as a major historical event, and from this point we may date the "cult of personality". Trotsky’ s prophecy of 1903 had come true: party rule had become Central Committee rule, and this in turn had becorne the personal tyranny of a dictator.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown, pp. 42-3

Birthday , Question , Past , Victory

“The law of England is anxious for the interests of persons against whom charges may be made. If a man commits a crime, there is a legal and constitutional mode by which that crime may be brought into discussion. He is liable to be tried, but though his crime may be as great and as aggravated as possible, he ought to have a full, fair, dispassionate, and temperate investigation of his conduct at the time of trial.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet (1763–1841) British judge

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 162.
Trial of Sir Francis Burdett (King v. Burdett) (1820)

Law , Time

“Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible. But I told the grand jury today and I say to you now that at no time did I ask anyone to lie, to hide or destroy evidence or to take any other unlawful action.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Televised address on August 17, 1998 CNN transcript http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/08/17/speech/transcript.html
1990s

Lie , Failure , Time , Parting

“It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or to acknowledge the personality of God. … In reading a work on agriculture, we have to skip the author's moral reflections, and the words "Providence" and "He" scattered along the page, to come at the profitable level of what he has to say. What he calls his religion is for the most part offensive to the nostrils. … There is more religion in men's science than there is science in their religion.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

Men , God , Religion , Feeling

“The twentieth century has witnessed with surprise, not merely the promulgation of these ferocious doctrines, but their enforcement with brutal vigour by the Government and by the populace. No past services, no proved patriotism, even wounds sustained in war, could procure immunity for persons whose only crime was that their parents had brought them into the world. Every kind of persecution, grave or petty, upon the world-famous scientists, writers, and composers at the top down to the wretched little Jewish children in the national schools, was practised, was glorified, and is still being practised and glorified.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 681
The 1930s

War , Children , World , School

Quotes about personality page 31

Quotes about personality
page 31