“Characters — conventional women with minor eccentricities — flourished in our world, as Mrs. Cork had no doubt observed. But she'd failed to notice that the characters were all old, rich and pedigreed. Newcomers, especially those of moderate means, were expected to form an attractive but featureless chorus behind our few madcap divas.”
Source: A Boy's Own Story (1982), Chapter One (p. 14).
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Edmund White28
American novelist and LGBT essayist 1940Related quotes
Frances McDormand (1957) American actress
Acceptance speech as "best actress" at the 69th Annual Academy Awards (24 March 1997) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phno8FKSl48, for her performance in Fargo · Full text online at the Academy Awards Acceptance Speech Database http://aaspeechesdb.oscars.org/link/069-3/ <br class="br">Context: It is impossible to maintain one's composure in this situation. What am I doing here? — especially considering the extraordinary group of women with whom I was nominated. We five women were fortunate to have the choice, not just the opportunity but the choice, to play such rich, complex female characters. And I congratulate producers like Working Title and Polygram for allowing directors to make autonomous casting decisions based on qualifications and not just market value. And I encourage writers and directors to keep these really interesting female roles coming — and while you're at it you can throw in a few for the men as well.
George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar
An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I
“One circumstance that helped our character development: we were needed.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)
At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends (1967); also quoted in Childhood Revisited (1974) by Joel I. Milgram and Dorothy June Sciarra, p. 90
1960s
Context: One circumstance that helped our character development: we were needed. I often think today of what an impact could be made if children believed they were contributing to a family's essential survival and happiness. In the transformation from a rural to an urban society, children are — though they might not agree — robbed of the opportunity to do genuinely responsible work.
Jeremy Hardy (1961–2019) British comedian
The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, October 1998 (rebroadcast on BBC 7, 30 May 2006)
Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.20
Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics
Book III, 5.12
Nicomachean Ethics
Variant: Now not to know that it is from the exercise of activities on particular objects that states of character are produced is the mark of a thoroughly senseless person.
James McCosh (1811–1894) British philosopher
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 66.
Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason
describing the pragmatist view, p. 42.
Eclipse of Reason (1947)