Quotes about character
page 18

“No matter what he does, one always forgives him. It does not depend upon looks, either – although this actual person is abominably good-looking – it does not depend upon intelligence or character or – anything – as you say, it is just "it."”

Elinor Glyn (1864–1943) British novelist and scriptwriter

The Man and the Moment (1914), ch. 7.

Intelligence, Forgiveness, Dependency, Personality

“For a viewer to think the custodian was trying to break free is the exact opposite of what the scene was supposed to convey. There is nothing gained from that kind of ambiguity. Ambiguity is not desirable or meaningful if it confuses an issue that is meant to be clear. This is the challenge of making a film that communicates but doesn't talk down: a lot of viewers and studio execs (and directors) hold that ANY ambiguity is the result of the filmmaker's failure. I disagree, but I also hold that, in order for ambiguity to be effective, certain things NEED to be unambiguous. For example, if it wasn't clear that Judy on the stage is the same character as Judy who'd invited Aeon to the Hostess' lair, then that's just bad execution. If the episode had been finished and seen in a version say, where we don't see her face drawn correctly, and viewers weren't sure it was the same character, they may wonder about things irrelevant to the story's themes, such as "do the custodians alter the appearance of their hosts", or "Trevor is masquerading a different person who is playing the role of Judy on the stage", etc, all of which does not help the story. Thinking that the custodian had a will of its own and wanted to break free is the same type of undesired speculation.”

Peter Chung (1961) Korean-American animator

Re: Utopia or Deuteranopia? http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?msgid=6622756

Communication, Failure, Thinking, Appearance

“"Rock" [music]… is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects. However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2000, The Spirit of the Liturgy (2000)

People, Music, Light, Universe

“The fall of the patriciate by no means divested the Roman commonwealth of its aristocratic character. We have already indicated that the plebeian party carried within it that character from the first as well as, and in some sense still more decidedly than, the patriciate; for, while in the old body of burgesses an absolute equality of rights prevailed, the new constitution set out from a distinction between the senatorial houses who were privileged in point of burgess rights and of burgess usufructs, and the mass of the other citizens. Immediately, therefore, on the abolition of the patriciate and the formal establishment of civic equality, a new aristocracy and a corresponding opposition were formed; and we have already shown how the former engrafted itself as it were on the fallen patriciate, and how, accordingly, the first movements of the new party of progress were mixed up with the last movements of the old opposition between the orders. The formation of these new parties began in the fifth century, but they assumed their definite shape only in the century which followed. The development of this internal change is, as it were, drowned amidst the noise of the great wars and victories, and not merely so, but the process of formation is in this case more withdrawn from view than any other in Roman history. Like a crust of ice gathering imperceptibly over the surface of a stream and imperceptibly confining it more and more, this new Roman aristocracy silently arose; and not less imperceptibly, like the current concealing itself beneath and slowly extending, there arose in opposition to it the new party of progress. It is very difficult to sum up in a general historical view the several, individually insignificant, traces of these two antagonistic movements, which do not for the present yield their historical product in any distinct actual catastrophe. But the freedom hitherto enjoyed in the commonwealth was undermined, and the foundation for future revolutions was laid, during this epoch; and the delineation of these as well as of the development of Rome in general would remain imperfect, if we should fail to give some idea of the strength of that encrusting ice, of the growth of the current beneath, and of the fearful moaning and cracking that foretold the mighty breaking up which was at hand. The Roman nobility attached itself, in form, to earlier institutions belonging to the times of the patriciate. Persons who once had filled the highest ordinary magistracies of the state not only, as a matter of course, practically enjoyed all along a higher honour, but also had at an early period certain honorary privileges associated with their position. The most ancient of these was doubtless the permission given to the descendants of such magistrates to place the wax images of these illustrious ancestors after their death in the family hall, along the wall where the pedigree was painted, and to have these images carried, on occasion of the death of members of the family, in the funeral procession.. the honouring of images was regarded in the Italo-Hellenic view as unrepublican, and on that account the Roman state-police did not at all tolerate the exhibition of effigies of the living, and strictly superintended that of effigies of the dead. With this privilege were associated various external insignia, reserved by law or custom for such magistrates and their descendants:--the golden finger-ring of the men, the silver-mounted trappings of the youths, the purple border on the toga and the golden amulet-case of the boys--trifling matters, but still important in a community where civic equality even in external appearance was so strictly adhered to, and where, even during the second Punic war, a burgess was arrested and kept for years in prison because he had appeared in public, in a manner not sanctioned by law, with a garland of roses upon his head.(6) These distinctions may perhaps have already existed partially in the time of the patrician government, and, so long as families of higher and humbler rank were distinguished within the patriciate, may have served as external insignia for the former; but they certainly only acquired political importance in consequence of the change of constitution in 387, by which the plebeian families that attained the consulate were placed on a footing of equal privilege with the patrician families, all of whom were now probably entitled to carry images of their ancestors. Moreover, it was now settled that the offices of state to which these hereditary privileges were attached should include neither the lower nor the extraordinary magistracies nor the tribunate of the plebs, but merely the consulship, the praetorship which stood on the same level with it,(7) and the curule aedileship, which bore a part in the administration of public justice and consequently in the exercise of the sovereign powers of the state.(8) Although this plebeian nobility, in the strict sense of the term, could only be formed after the curule offices were opened to plebeians, yet it exhibited in a short time, if not at the very first, a certain compactness of organization--doubtless because such a nobility had long been prefigured in the old senatorial plebeian families. The result of the Licinian laws in reality therefore amounted nearly to what we should now call the creation of a batch of peers. Now that the plebeian families ennobled by their curule ancestors were united into one body with the patrician families and acquired a distinctive position and distinguished power in the commonwealth, the Romans had again arrived at the point whence they had started; there was once more not merely a governing aristocracy and a hereditary nobility--both of which in fact had never disappeared--but there was a governing hereditary nobility, and the feud between the gentes in possession of the government and the commons rising in revolt against the gentes could not but begin afresh. And matters very soon reached that stage. The nobility was not content with its honorary privileges which were matters of comparative indifference, but strove after separate and sole political power, and sought to convert the most important institutions of the state--the senate and the equestrian order--from organs of the commonwealth into organs of the plebeio-patrician aristocracy.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome - Volume 2

Death, Men, War, Youth

“Easy was, like, spending time with Jennifer on set. Difficult stuff about character is, it was a little bit like just being the only one with no superhuman powers.”

Goran Višnjić (1972) Croatian actor

Goran Visnjic while filming Elektra

Time

“The essential difference between that knowledge which is, and that which is not conclusive evidence of Christian character, lies in this: the object of the one is the agreement of the several parts of a theological proposition; the object of the other is moral beauty, the intrinsic loveliness of God and Divine things. The sinner sees and hates; the saint sees and loves.”

Gardiner Spring (1785–1873) American clergyman

Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 365.

Love, God, Hate, Beauty

““(I got introduced to) the late and great Mani Madhava Cakyar’s King Udayana in Svapnavasavadatta. In what may have been among his last performances on the public stage I was fortunate to see Sri Cakyar, who at an advanced age, literally threw away his walking stick as he entered the stage to become a sprightly royal lover pining away for his beloved Vasavadatta. At his home in Likkadi he demonstrated the nava rasas… Sri Cakyar vividly illustrated to me that kutiyattam acting has the power to transform even the oldest person into the character he portrays”
- Prof. Farley P. Richmond (Expert on Indian theatre), Department of Theatre and Film Studies, University of Georgia.”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Abhinaya and Netrābhinaya
Source: www.uga.edu/farleyrichmond/projects/trivandrum%20speech.pdf

Age, Home, Lovers, Study

“The BBC said the only thing they didn’t like about the show was those weird little animated characters and suggested maybe they could get rid of them because they would never catch on.”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

Quoted in 2009 about The Simpsons shorts in The Tracey Ullman Show https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/films/107675/Brit-comedienne-Tracey-Ullman-can-t-crack-the-UK

Animals

“Very few of the Christians recanted, although an altar with a fire burning on it was generally kept in the arena for their convenience. All a prisoner had to do was scatter a pinch of incense on the flame and he was given a Certificate of Sacrifice and turned free.
It was also carefully explained to him that he was not worshiping the emperor; merely acknowledging the divine character of the emperor as head of the Roman state. Still, almost no Christians availed themselves of the chance to escape.”

Daniel P. Mannix (1911–1997) animal collector and author

About early Christians in the Arena. Those about to Die (1958), Chapter 14

Chance

“I frequently ask leaders if they know what their personal values are, and most say yes. Then I ask them: ‘Have you written them down?’ Most say no. Values are incredibly important! They determine who we really are—what our character is, the real you when the mask is off.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ Live Learn Lead to Make a Difference https://books.google.com/books?id=s0q7mZf9oDkC&lpg=pg=PP1&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2006 p. 68-69. On Living Your Values

Personality

“How few philosophers are to be found who are such in character, so ordered in soul and in life, as reason demands; who regard their teaching not as a display of knowledge, but as the rule of life; who obey themselves, and submit to their own decrees!”
Quotus enim quisque philosophorum invenitur, qui sit ita moratus, ita animo ac vita constitutus, ut ratio postulat? qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem scientiae, sed legem vitae putet? qui obtemperet ipse sibi et decretis suis pareat?

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, Chapter IV; translation by Andrew P. Peabody
Tusculanae Disputationes – Tusculan Disputations (45 BC)

Life, Soul, Knowledge

“It should be never absent from our recollection that there are now two distinct nations in China--the Chinese and the Tartars--whose characters essentially differ, notwithstanding their external appearance be nearly the same. They are both subject to the most absolute authority that can be vested in a Prince(Qianlong), but with this distinction--that to the Chinese it is a foreign tyranny, to the Tartar a domestic despotism. The latter consider themselves as in some degree partakers of their Sovereign's dominions over the former, and that imagination may, perhaps, somewhat console them under the pressure of his power upon themselves--like the house servants and house negroes belonging to a great landlord in Livonia or planter in Jamaica, who, though serfs themselves, look down upon the peasantry and field negroes as much their inferiors.”

George Macartney (1737–1806) British statesman, colonial administrator and diplomat

Our First Ambassador to China (Biography, 1908)

Imagination, Appearance, Housing

“My friend, there is something very serious in this business. The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, Who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the Bishop on the heads of candidates for the ministry.... There is no authority, civil or religious — there can be no legitimate government — but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it — all without it is rebellion and perdition, or, in more orthodox words, damnation... Your prophecy, my dear friend, has not become history as yet. I have no resentment of animosity against the gentleman [Jefferson] and abhor the idea of blackening his character or transmitting him in odious colors to posterity. But I write with difficulty and am afraid of diffusing myself in too many correspondences. If I should receive a letter from him, however, I should not fail to acknowledge and answer it.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Adams as misquoted by David Barton, in "The Dream of Dr. Benjamin Rush & God's Hand in Reconciling John Adams and Thomas Jefferson" in WallBuilders (June 2008) http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=10152; omitting many words, giving a very misleading impression that Adams (who did not believe in the Christian Trinity) is endorsing the viewpoint that a government must be administered by the Holy Ghost to be legitimate. Barton went on to use another version, substituting some of Adams' words with false ones: Misattributed

Marriage, Age, Color, History

“Education is the chief remedy for all those great evils which afflict the country. Education will not only cultivate and improve the intellect of the nation, but will also purify its character.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech delivered at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington Butts, London on 24th May 1870. See Education in India for major portion of the speech.

Education, Affliction, Evil, Country

“Shy and proud men … are more liable than any others to fall into the hands of parasites and creatures of low character. For in the intimacies which are formed by shy men, they do not choose, but are chosen.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Source: The Statesman (1836), Ch. 4. p. 27

Men

“A movie loosely based upon my novel, I Know What You Did Last Summer, opened in theaters around the country. I was ecstatic until I settled into a theater seat with my box of popcorn and discovered that Hollywood had turned my teenage suspense story into a slasher film. The setting had been changed from the mountains of New Mexico to a fishing village on the East Coast, so an insane fisherman, who wasn't in my book, could decapitate my characters with an ice hook. The first thing I did after leaving the theater was phone our daughter Kerry and warn her not to let the grandchildren see it.”

Lois Duncan (1934–2016) American young-adult and children's writer

On the adaptation of her novel I Know What You Did Last Summer in 1997, quoted in MoviePilot https://moviepilot.com/posts/3514425 piece 1990–2002

Books, Mountain, Fish, Change

“I suppose the longer anyone spends on earth, the closer we all get to becoming superfluous characters.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

Reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mob6q/joseph_gordonlevitt_are_we_recording_ask_me/ccb2ua3 , September 12, 2013

“Excellent poetry, but not a good working philosophy. Goldsmith would have been right, if, in fact, the accumulation of wealth meant the decay of men. It is rare indeed that the men who are accumulating wealth decay. It is only when they cease production, when accumulation stops, that an irreparable decay begins. Wealth is the product of industry, ambition, character and untiring effort. In all experience, the accumulation of wealth means the multiplication of schools, the increase of knowledge, the dissemination of intelligence, the encouragement of science, the broadening of outlook, the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture. Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence. But we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well-nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it. And there never was a time when wealth was so generally regarded as a means, or so little regarded as an end, as today. Just a little time ago we read in your newspapers that two leaders of American business, whose efforts at accumulation had been most astonishingly successful, had given fifty or sixty million dollars as endowments to educational works. That was real news. It was characteristic of our American experience with men of large resources. They use their power to serve, not themselves and their own families, but the public. I feel sure that the coming generations, which will benefit by those endowments, will not be easily convinced that they have suffered greatly because of these particular accumulations of wealth.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Men, Education, Fear, School

“Transformers is so belabored that it makes Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End seem like a masterpiece of pacing. It makes that "classic" midsummer alien invasion movie, Independence Day, seem like a template for inventive plotting and solid character development. Even by Michael Bay standards, this movie is vapid. Yes, there are plenty of explosions, but those are a dime-a-dozen these days; even Discovery Channel's Mythbusters has them. Transformers isn't clean, big-budget fun; it's clean, big-budget tedium. For Transformers fans, I suppose this is a dream motion picture. For everyone else, it's a nightmare.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=591 of Transformers (2007). One-and-a-half star reviews

World, Dreams

“The family is the primary transmitter of social capital – the values and character traits that enable people to seize opportunities. Family structure is a primary predictor of an individual's life chances, and family disintegration is the principal cause of the intergenerational transmission of poverty.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Column, March 21, 2014, " Paul Ryan was right – poverty is a cultural problem" http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-lefts-half-century-of-denial-over-poverty/2014/03/21/1aeaff4e-b049-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html at washingtonpost.com. 2010s

Life, People, Family, Chance

“I will not say that a witness shall not be asked to what may tend to disparage him: that would prevent an investigation into the character of the witness, which may often be of importance to ascertain. I think those questions only should not be allowed to be asked which have a direct and immediate effect to disgrace or disparage the witness.”

Richard Arden, 1st Baron Alvanley (1744–1804) British judge and politician

Macbride v. Macbride (1805), 4 Esp. 242.

Question, Thinking

“I wish I had the answer to that, because if I knew how to create an instantly popular character like that, I would do more of them. It’s weird to me because, on one hand, she’s appealing, but you look at her and she’s not exactly a good role model for girls. And in the past, we have definitely explored some of the darker edges of her story. She was kind of in an on-going abusive relationship with the Joker. So it is weird but maybe a lot of her appeal, at least recently, is because they have separated her from the Joker in comics. She’s become her own standalone character and definitely not in an abusive relationship with the Joker anymore. I guess that is somewhat empowering and people can relate to it. But truthfully, she was a really, really popular character even before all this. I think part of it is probably, to pat my own back, design. She was a really simple basic character in red and black, cute face, cute figure, one and done. So that definitely has to be a part of it.”

Bruce Timm (1961) Animator

People, Girl, Thinking, Past

“The fact that laws were given to man, both affirmative and negative, supports the principle, that God's knowledge of future events does not change their character. The great doubt that presents itself to our mind is the result of the insufficiency of our intellect.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.20

God, Law, Support, Knowledge

“The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful to society, had that society been well organized.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

Letter 19
Letters Written in Sweden (1796)

“One of the men in the boat—I could not remember which character—had moved through all of the circles of theological supposition: praying, believing that God was a merciful Deity who sat up nights worrying about him, then believing that God was a cruel bastard, and finally deciding that no one was listening.”

Dan Simmons book Endymion

Source: Endymion (1996), Chapter 34 (p. 344)

Men, God, Night

“I’m actually quite tired because Threepio is an exhausting character — he’s always very tense, he’s always slightly on the edge of panic. That’s why he’s funny, because he’s always in the wrong place. I record each piece three times in a row, so the director can choose without interrupting too much.”

Anthony Daniels (1946) English actor

Anthony Daniels definitive 'Star Wars' interview http://ew.com/article/2014/09/16/star-wars-anthony-daniels-interview/ (September 16, 2014)

Time

“Francis had always been ecumenical in his atheism. He was as prepared to disbelieve in this Tolca character as he was to disbelieve in Yahweh, Jesus, Buddha, Vishnu, or any of the other words for what his father used to call “forcing yourself to misperceive the obvious.””

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 7 (p. 83)

“Partly from being a more scattered population, which leads to self-dependence — partly to their religious struggles having given an historical character to their ordinary remembrances, nourished by that family pride which loves to look back — there is more individuality among the Scotch than among any other peasantry.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

No.10. Old Mortality — JENNY DENNISON.
Literary Remains

Love, Family, Dependency

“If someone asks you where you get your characters… and they're sure to do that… you always say, "He's a combination of a lot of people I have known." That way, if your character is a damn fool, nobody will want to identify with him… To tell the truth, I don't know how a man gets a character for a story, anymore than I know how he falls in love. I don't know if his characters spring full-blown from his head, or if he sees a man walking down the street and recognises him instantly… I doubt any writer knows for sure where his characters come from.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

Comment made to Novalyne Price. One Who Walked Alone by Novalyne Price Ellis, pp. 78-79
Other

Love, People, Truth, Fools

“Mathematics is too arduous and uninviting a field to appeal to those to whom it does not give great rewards. These rewards are of exactly the same character as those of the artist. To see a difficult uncompromising material take living shape and meaning is to be Pygmalion, whether the material is stone or hard, stonelike logic. To see meaning and understanding come where there has been no meaning and no understanding is to share the work of a demiurge. No amount of technical correctness and no amount of labour can replace this creative moment, whether in the life of a mathematician or of a painter or musician. Bound up with it is a judgement of values, quite parallel to the judgement of values that belongs to the painter or the musician. Neither the artist nor the mathematician may be able to tell you what constitutes the difference between a significant piece of work and an inflated trifle; but if he is not able to recognise this in his own heart, he is no artist and no mathematician.”

Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) American mathematician

Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth (1964)

Life, Mathematics, Understanding, Heart

“Old maids who have never yielded in their habits of life or in their characters to other lives and other characters, as the fate of woman exacts, have, as a general thing, a mania for making others give way to them.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Les vieilles filles n'ayant pas fait plier leur caractère et leur vie à une autre vie ni à d'autres caractères, comme l'exige la destinée de la femme, ont, pour la plupart, la manie de vouloir tout faire plier autour d'elles.
Source: The Vicar of Tours (1832), Ch. I.

Life, Fate, Way

“Well, I think “likability” is an overused word. I don’t watch people ’cause I like them; I watch them because they’re compelling. Sympathetic is a little different … Likable just thins you out. Working to make a character likable is what kills most TV shows.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

http://www.vulture.com/2010/06/louis_ck_interview.html (2010)

People, Thinking

“He has wasted the day, he tells himself, he has wasted the day as he has wasted so many days of his life … while that huge work with which he has cheated himself, that enormous novel which would lift him at a bound from the impasse in which he stifles, whose dozens of characters would develop a vision of life in bountiful complexity, lies foundering, rotting on a beach of purposeless effort. Notes here, pages there, it sprawls through a formless wreck of incidental ideas and half-episodes; utterly without shape. He is not even a hero for it.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Source: The Man Who Studied Yoga (1956), Ch. 5

Life, Idea, Effort, Cheating

“Every man makes his own summer. The season has no character of its own, unless one is a farmer with a professional concern for the weather.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Three Worlds, Three Summers — But Not the Summer Just Past.

Summer, Weather, Season

“Notwithstanding the hope that my friend [Cobden], who has just addressed you, has expressed, that it may not become a war of classes, I am not sure that it has not already become such, and I doubt whether it can have any other character. I believe this to be a movement of the commercial and industrial classes against the Lords and great proprietors of the soil…Since the time when we first came to London to ask the attention of Parliament to the question of the Corn Law, two millions of human beings have been added to the population of the United Kingdom…I see them now in my mind's eye ranged before me, old men and young children, all looking to the Government for bread; some endeavouring to resist the stroke of famine, clamorous and turbulent, but still arguing with us; some dying mute and uncomplaining. Multitudes have died of hunger in the United Kingdom since we first asked the Government to repeal the Corn Law, and although the great and powerful may not regard those who suffer mutely and die in silence, yet the recording angel will note down their patient endurance and the heavy guilt of those by whom they have been sacrificed…”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Covent Garden (19 December 1845), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 141-142.
1840s

Men, Hunger, War, Children

“In particular, unification represents my purpose to bring about God’s ideal world. Unification is not union. Union is when two things come together. Unification is when two become one. “Unification Church” became our commonly known name later, but it was given to us by others. In the beginning, university students referred to us as “the Seoul Church.” I do not like using the word kyo-hoi in its common usage to mean church. But I like its meaning from the original Chinese characters. Kyo means “to teach,” and Hoi means “gathering.” The Korean word means, literally, “gathering for teaching.” The word for religion, jong-kyo, is composed of two Chinese characters meaning “central” and “teaching,” respectively. When the word church means a gathering where spiritual fundamentals are taught, it has a good meaning. But the meaning of the word kyo-hoi does not provide any reason for people to share with each other. People in general do not use the word kyo-hoi with that meaning. I did not want to place ourselves in this separatist type of category. My hope was for the rise of a church without a denomination. True religion tries to save the nation, even if it must sacrifice its own religious body to do so; it tries to save the world, even at the cost of sacrificing its nation; and it tries to save humanity, even if this means sacrificing the world. By this understanding, there can never be a time when the denomination takes precedence. It was necessary to hang out a church sign, but in my heart I was ready to take it down at any time. As soon as a person hangs a sign that says “church,” he is making a distinction between church and not church. Taking something that is one and dividing itinto two is not right. This was not my dream. It is not the path I chose to travel. If I need to take down that sign to save the nation or the world, I am ready to do so at any time.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

2009, As a Peaceloving Global Citizen http://www.euro-tongil.org/swedish/english/TFbiography.pdf, page 56.

God, People, World, Religion

“I always say I'm an escape artist, Style is something I've always tried to avoid. I'm more interested in character. Character comes out of the work. Style is applied or imposed on it.”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

in 'Sketches for a Series', interview with art-critic Rose Slivka; as quoted in 'Elaine de Kooning, Artist and Teacher, Dies at 68', New York Times, Grace Glueck, February 2, 1989
1972 - 1989

“The first Part. Of the Definitions of the Dismes. The first Definition. Disme is a kind of Arithmeticke, invented by the tenth progression, consisting in Characters of Cyphers; whereby a certaine number is described, and by which also all accounts which happen in humane affayres, are dispatched by whole numbers, without fractions or broken numbers.”

Simon Stevin (1548–1620) Flemish scientist, mathematician and military engineer

Disme: the Art of Tenths, Or, Decimall Arithmetike (1608)

Parting

“I want to ask this congregation, every man, woman and child, to answer the question in their own heart, what kind of a being God is?... Does any man or woman know? Have any of you seen him, heard him, or communed with him?... God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make Himself visible,—I say, if you were to see Him today, you would see Him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another.... It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God Himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 6:303-04 (7 April 1844)
1840s, King Follett discourse (1844)

God, Secret, World, Communication

“The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north and east.”

James A. Michener book Caribbean

Caribbean (1989) First lines

Love, World, Water, Sea

“In the ancient cultural places of the world there was a temple, a church or a cathedral in its center. From there came the order of life. In every modern big city there is a bank building in its center. In my »Pied Piper« I have tried to depict this as a kind of demon cult, where money is something to be prayed to like something sacred. It's even being expressed there in words that it is »God«. It performs miracles, because the multiplication of money itself is yet a miracle. After all, the dealings there are with a miraculous multiplication of money. It has the character of everlastingness. But if there is anything that is just a purely man-made thing, then it's money.”

Michael Ende (1929–1995) German author

"Ende no yuigon" ["Ende's Last Message"] (May 1999), broadcast of an interview of February 1994, as quoted in "Michael Ende's Last Words to the Japanese" http://www.equilibrismus.de/en/topics/general/rm-michael_ende.htm at Equilibrism (Equilibrismus.de)

Life, Money, God, World

“Although Saussure recognized the necessity of putting the phonic substance between brackets ("What is essential in language, we shall see, is foreign to the phonic character of the linguistic sign" [p. 21]. "In its essence it [the linguistic signifier] is not at all phonic" [p. 164]), Saussure, for essential, and essentially metaphysical, reasons had to privilege speech, everything that links the sign to phone. He also speaks of the "natural link" between thought and voice, meaning and sound (p. 46). He even speaks of "thought-sound" (p. 156). I have attempted elsewhere to show what is traditional in such a gesture, and to what necessities it submits. In any event, it winds up contradicting the most interesting critical motive of the Course, making of linguistics the regulatory model, the "pattern" for a general semiology of which it was to be, by all rights and theoretically, only a part. The theme of the arbitrary, thus, is turned away from its most fruitful paths (formalization) toward a hierarchizing teleology:… One finds exactly the same gesture and the same concepts in Hegel. The contradiction between these two moments of the Course is also marked by Saussure's recognizing elsewhere that "it is not spoken language that is natural to man, but the faculty of constituting a language, that is, a system of distinct signs …," that is, the possibility of the code and of articulation, independent of any substance, for example, phonic substance.”

Jacques Derrida book Positions

Source: Positions, 1982, p. 21

Motivation, Nature, Parting

“I believe that during the intervention of NATO in Kosovo there is an element nobody can question: the air attacks, the bombs, are not caused by a material interest. Their character is exclusively humanitarian: What is at stake here are the principles, human rights which have priority above state sovereignty. This makes it legitimate to attack the Yugoslav Federation, although without the United Nations mandate.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Interview for the French newspaper Le Monde (29 April 1999); this statement is considered the source of the term w:Humanitarian bombing", frequently used about the Kosovo War.

Question

“How much the work of an artist owes to an art movement to which he belongs can never be determined exactly, if only because the movement derives its character from the individual creations of its members.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art & Other Serious Matters, (1985), p. 55, "Evidences of Surreality"

Art

“Believe me, I am still very surprised that I managed to make that film [Close-Up]. When I actually look back on that film, I really feel that I was not the director but instead just a member of the audience. Because the film made itself, to a large extent. The characters involved were very real, I wasn't directing the actors so much as being directed by them. So it was a very particular film.”

Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/apr/28/hayfilmfestival2005.guardianhayfestival

Feeling

“I was so conflicted and disillusioned about organized religion that I couldn't write. … I think my writings will go on being the writings of a believer in Christ. I think I'll be less frustrated and freer to write about the full dimension of what that means. But I write metaphysical thrillers, and how this works out in fiction is always mysterious: characters confront dilemmas. The worldview of the novel is certainly optimistic and that of a believer. What character will say what, I don't know until I start writing. …. Because I had written Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, I had become a public Christian. I wanted my readers to know that I was stepping aside from organized religion and the names Christian and Christianity because I wanted to exonerate myself from the things organized religion was doing in the name of Jesus. Christians have lost credibility in America as people who know how to love. They have become associated with hatred, persecution, attempting to abolish the separation of church and state, and trying to pressure people to vote certain ways in elections. I wanted to make it clear that I did not in any way remain complicit with those things.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

"Q & A: Anne Rice on Following Christ Without Christianity" interview by Sarah Pulliam Bailey in Christianity Today (17 Augutst 2010) http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=89167

Love, People, Religion, Way

“Competition has been curtailed by larger corporations; it has been sabotaged by groups of smaller entrepreneurs acting collectively. Both groups have made clear the locus of liberalism's rhetoric of small business and family farm.The character and ideology of the small entrepreneur and the facts of the market are selling the idea of competition short. These liberal heroes, the small businessmen and the farmer, do not want to develop their characters by free and open competition; they do not believe in competition, and they have been doing their best to get away from it.When the small businessmen are asked whether they think free competition is…a good thing, they answer…, 'Yes, of course—what do you mean?' … Finally: 'How about here in this town in furniture?'—or groceries, or whatever the man's line is. Their answers are of two sorts: 'Yes, if it's fair competition,' which turns out to mean: 'if it doesn't make me compete.' … The small businessman, as well as the farmer, wants to become big, not directly by eating up others like himself in competition, but by the indirect ways means practiced by his own particular heroes—those already big. In the dream life of the small entrepreneur, the sure fix is replacing the open market.But if small men wish to close their ranks, why do they continue to talk…about free competition? The answer is that the political function of free competition is what really matters now…[f]or, if there is free competition and a constant coming and going of enterprises, the one who remains established is 'the better man' and 'deserves to be where he is.' But if instead of such competition, there is a rigid line between successful entrepreneurs and the employee community, the man on top may be 'coasting on what his father did,' and not really be worthy of his hard-won position. Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm. …… In Congress small-business committees clamored for legislation to save the weak backbone of the national economy. Their legislative efforts have been directed against their more efficient competitors. First they tried to kill off the low-priced chain stores by taxation; then they tried to eliminate the alleged buying advantages of mass distributor; finally they tried to freeze the profits of all distributors in order to protect their own profits from those who could and were selling goods cheaper to the consumer.The independent retailer…has been pushing to maintain a given margin under the guise of 'fair competition' and 'fair-trade' laws. He now regularly demands that the number of outlets controlled by chain stores be drastically limited and that production be divorced from distribution. This would, of course, kill the low prices charged consumers by the A&P;, which makes very small retail profits, selling almost at cost, and whose real profits come from the manufacturing and packaging.…Under the threat of 'ruinous competition,' laws are on the books of many states and cities legalizing the ruin of competition.”

C. Wright Mills book White Collar: The American Middle Classes

Section One: The Competitive Way of Life.
White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)

Life, Men, Books, Family

“The present serves to enclose you the letter of the father in favor of his son from Mr. Charles Boarman, [Sr. ], addressed to me, and a letter from the son himself stating his wish to procure the place of midshipman in the navy. The son is not personally known to me. The father has been for a great number of years a preceptor of youth in Maryland and in this district and has sustained the best possible character. He would not, I persuade myself from his character, recommend even a son u[pon? ] the terms that he has, unless he Places Much had merit to authorize such recommendation. The son, you will observe by his Sought letter which is somewhat singular, has promised much should he be honored with the situation which he solicits at your hand.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

Robert Brent writing to then United States Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton endorsing Charles Boarman's application (August 1811)
A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815 (1991)

Youth, Personality

“It has become apparent that art can have a startling impact without really being or saying anything startling — or new. The character itself of being startling, spectacular, or upsetting has become conventionalized, part of safe good taste.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

"Avant Garde Attitudes" http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/avantgarde.html, The John Power Lecture in Contemporary Art, University of Sydney, (17 May 1968); printed by The Power Institute of Fine Arts, University of Sydney (1969) 1960s

Art, Parting

“I took some bad acid in November of 1965, and the after effect left me crazy and helpless for six months. My mind would drift into a place that was very electrical and crackly, filled with harsh, abrasive, low grade, cartoony, tawdry carnival visions. There was a nightmarish mechanical aspect to everyday life. My ego was so shattered, so fragmented that it didn't get in the way during what was the most unself-conscious period of my life. I was kind of on automatic pilot and was still constantly drawing. Most of my popular characters—Mr. Natural, Flaky Foont, Angelfood McSpade, Eggs Ackley, The Snoid, The Vulture Demonesses, Av' n' Gar, Shuman the Human, the Truckin' guys, Devil Girl—all suddenly appeared in the drawings in my sketchbook in this period, early 1966. Amazing! I was relieved when it was finally over, but I also immediately missed the egoless state of that strange interlude. LSD put me somewhere else. I wasn't sure where. All I know is, it was a strange place. Psychedelic drugs broke me out of my social programming. It was a good thing for me, traumatic though, and I may have been permanently damaged by the whole thing, I'm not sure. I see LSD as a positive, important life experience for me, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 132

Life, Way, Guy, Girl

“Today that rarely happens. Most often the songs are used as a relief. They have nothing to do with the film per say. And all look almost the same. Just replace the central characters and a step here and there…choreography remains the same in most cases. So does the beat. We have so many classical dances and folk dances in the country but nobody seems to be using them.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quote, Grace personified: Waheeda Rehman

Dance, Country

“I suppose he had the good luck to be executed, no? I had an hour's chat with him in Buenos Aires. He struck me as a kind of play actor, no? Living up to a certain role. I mean, being a professional Andalusian… But in the case of Lorca, it was very strange because I lived in Andalusia and the Andalusians aren't a bit like that. His were stage Andalusians. Maybe he thought that in Buenos Aires he had to live up to that character, but in Andalusia, people are not like that. In fact, if you are in Andalusia, if you are talking to a man of letters and you speak to him about bullfights, he'll say, 'Oh well, that sort of this pleases people, I suppose, but really the torero works in no danger whatsoever. Because they are bored by these things, because every writer is bored by the local color in his own country. Well, when I met Lorca, he was being a professional Andalusian… Besides, Lorca wanted to astonish us. He said to me that he was very troubled about a very important figure in the contemporary world. A character in whom he could see all the tragedy of American life. And then he went on in this way until I asked him who was this character and it turned out this character was Mickey Mouse. I suppose he was trying to be clever. And I thought, 'That's the kind of thing you say when you are very, very young and you want to astonish somebody.' But after all, he was a grown man, he had no need, he could have talked in a different way. But when he started in about Mickey Mouse being a symbol of America, there was a friend of mine there and he looked at me and I looked at him and we both walked away because we were too old for that kind of game, no? Even at that time.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Richard Burgin, Conversation with Jorge Luis Borges, pages 92-93.
Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (1968)

Life, People, World, Color

“In strategic thinking, one first seeks a clear understanding of the particular character of each element of a situation and then makes the fullest possible use of human brainpower to restructure the elements in the most advantageous way. Phenomena and events in the real word do not always fit a linear model. Hence the most reliable means of dissecting a situation into its constituent parts and reassembling then in the desired pattern is not a step-by-step methodology such as systems analysis. Rather, it is that ultimate nonlinear thinking tool, the human brain. True strategic thinking thus contrasts sharply with the conventional mechanical systems approach based on linear thinking. But it also contrasts with the approach that stakes everything on intuition, reaching conclusions without any real breakdown or analysis… No matter how difficult or unprecedented the problem, a breakthrough to the best possible solution can come only from a combination of rational analysis, based on the real nature of things, and imaginative reintegration of all the different items into a new pattern, using nonlinear brainpower. This is always the most effective approach to devising strategies for dealing successfully with challenges and opportunities, in the market arena as on the battlefield.”

Kenichi Ohmae (1943) Japanese academic

Source: The Mind Of The Strategist, 1982, p. 304

Way, Imagination, Understanding, Nature

“I should not interfere with this natural march of history. To hold onto power for another half-year, when the country has a strong man who is worthy of being president and with whom practically every Russian today ties his hopes for the future? Why should I interfere with him? Why wait still another half-year? No, that's not for me! It's simply not in my character!”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

1990s, Farewell speech (1999)

Hope, History, Nature, Strong

“There are two kinds of characters in all fiction, the born and the synthetic. If the writer has to ask himself questions — is he tall, is he short?”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

he had better quit.
Rex Stout
The New York Times, "Talk with Rex Stout"

Question

“The novelist with a prudent prodigality may employ descriptions, dialogues, and episodes, which would be fatal in a drama. Characters may be introduced and dismissed without having any important connection with the plot; it is enough if they serve the purpose of the chapter in which they appear. Although as a matter of fine art no character should have a place in a novel unless it form an integral element of the story, and no episode should be introduced unless it reflects some strong light on the characters or incidents, this is a critical demand which only fine artists think of satisfying, and only delicate tastes appreciate. For the mass of readers it is enough if they are mused; and indeed all readers, no matter how critical their taste, would rather be pleased by a transgression of the law than wearied by prescription. Delight condones offence. The only question for the writer is, whether the offence is so trivial as to be submerged in the delight. And he will do well to remember that the greater flexibility belonging to the novel by no means removes the novel from the laws which rule the drama.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)

Law, Art, Question, Thinking

“The act of the soul, in surrendering itself into the hands of Christ, forms a connecting bond between Him as the Vine and the soul as the branches, which communicates life, strength, nourishment, and beauty. In a word, with a just view of the character, and a supreme attachment to the person of Christ, the believer yields himself into His hands as a full and complete Saviour. Him he receives; upon Him he rests, and rests for time and eternity.”

Gardiner Spring (1785–1873) American clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 226.

Life, Beauty, Soul, Communication

“The first time I remember women reacting to me was when we were filming Hud in Texas. Women were literally trying to climb through the transoms at the motel where I stayed. At first, it's flattering to the ego. At first. Then you realize that they're mixing me up with the roles I play — characters created by writers who have nothing to do with who I am.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in Paul and Joanne: A Biography of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward by Joe Morella and Edward Z. Epstein (Delacorte Press, 1988, ISBN 0-440-50004-4), p. 96

Women, Time

“The sentiment that brings us here today is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned and made glorious the high places of all civilized nations with the grandest and most enduring works of art, designed to illustrate the characters and perpetuate the memories of great public men. It is the sentiment which from year to year adorns with fragrant and beautiful flowers the graves of our loyal, brave, and patriotic soldiers who fell in defense of the Union and liberty. It is the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, which often, in the presence of many who hear me, has filled yonder heights of Arlington with the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime enthusiasm of poetry and song; a sentiment which can never die while the republic lives.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Men, Beauty, Art, Flowers

“In the 21st Century I believe the mission of the United Nations will be defined by a new, more profound, awareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life, regardless of race or religion. This will require us to look beyond the framework of States, and beneath the surface of nations or communities. We must focus, as never before, on improving the conditions of the individual men and women who give the state or nation its richness and character.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Nobel lecture (2001)

Life, Women, Men, Religion

“Gandhi had been right. There was only one way to behave, even if it seemed, in the short term, against one’s self-interest. Surely it was in one’s self-interest in the long term to exhibit generosity, humanity, kindness and a sense of justice to one’s fellow men. It was cynicism of Beesley’s kind which had, after all, led to the threatened extinction of the whole human race. There could be no such thing s a “righteous” war, for war was by its very nature an act of injustice against the individual, but there could be such a thing as an “unrighteous” war—an evil war, a war begun by men who were utterly corrupt, both morally and intellectually. I had begun to think that it was a definition of those who would make war—that whatever motives they claimed, whatever ideals they promoted, whatever “threat” they referred to, they could not be excused—because of their actions they could only be of a degenerate and immoral character.”

Michael Moorcock book The Land Leviathan

Book 2, Chapter 4 “The Triumphant Beast” (p. 262)
The Land Leviathan (1974)

Men, War, Justice, Way

“Multiplication of whole Numbers …Note, that for the more easie solution of this proposition, it were necessary to have in memory the multiplication of the 9 simple Characters among themselves, learning them by rote out of the Table here placed…”

Simon Stevin (1548–1620) Flemish scientist, mathematician and military engineer

Disme: the Art of Tenths, Or, Decimall Arithmetike (1608)

Learning, Memory

“To avert the danger [posed by theory] to life, Nietzsche could choose one of two ways: he could insist on the strictly esoteric character of the theoretical analysis of life—that is, restore the Platonic notion of the noble delusion—or else he could deny the possibility of theory proper and so conceive of thought as essentially subservient to, or dependent on, life or fate… If not Nietzsche himself, at any rate his successors [Heidegger] adopted the second alternative.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 26

Life, Fate, Way, Dependency

“Those who do Negro-sculpture in this country are wrong. We are in France; in the country of Ronsard, La Fontaine, and Racine. What connection is there between this country and these men, and Negro sculpture? An artist can only create in accordance with the character of his people and his time.”

Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) sculptor from France

Source: Conversations with Judith Cladel (1939–1944), p. 407

Men, People, Time, Country

“Geography is concerned to provide accurate, orderly, and rational description and interpretation of the variable character of the earth surface.”

Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) American Geographer

Source: Perspective on the nature of geography (1958), p. 21

“I poured my heart and soul into the role of Chandramukhi. In my view, hers was the greater character (compared with Paro's). One scene that will forever be etched in my memory is the one in which Devdas takes leave of Chandramukhi, saying that he hopes he will meet her again, 'if not in this lifetime, then in the next.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

Vyjayanthimala still cuts a striking figure tall

Hope, Soul, Memory, Heart

“Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him… Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

Column discussing John Toland's biography of Hitler http://www.realchange.org/hitler.htm (1977). 1970s

War, History, Courage, Sense

“We face a hostile ideology; global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidous in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully there is call for not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of questions but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain despite every provocation on our charted course towards permanent peace and human betterment.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1960s, Farewell address (1961)

Hostility, Peace, Question

“I was dealing with a political story where much of the action took place on the floor of the U. S. Senate, and one of the edicts that came down from the Mt. Sinai of advertisers row was that at no time in a political drama must a speech or a character be equated with an existing political party or current political problems. So several million viewers were treated to an incredible display of senators shouting, gesticulating and talking in hieroglyphics, saying not a single thing germaine to the current political scene.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Rod Serling on Arena, American Masters.
Other

Problem, Time

“All those things that make a nation richer, stronger, or more happy; or that tend to exalt national character, but that will not pay individuals, deserve public encouragement.”

William Playfair (1758–1824) British mathematician, engineer and political economist

Observations on the Greenland Trade, Chart XVIII, page 78.
The Commercial and Political Atlas, 3rd Edition

Happiness

“By the ruler's cultivation of his own character, the duties of universal obligation are set forth. By honoring men of virtue and talents, he is preserved from errors of judgment.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Men, Error, Universe

“Magic and art tend to share a lot of the same language. They both talk about evocation, invocation, and conjuring. If you’re trying to conjure a character, then maybe you should treat that with the respect that you would if you were trying to conjure a demon. Because if an image of a god is a god, then in some sense the image of a demon is a demon. I’m thinking of people like Malcolm Lowry, the exquisite author of Under the Volcano. There are kabbalistic demons that are lurking all the way through Under the Volcano, and I assume they were probably similar forces to the ones that eventually overwhelmed Lowry’s life, such as the drinking and the madness. When I hear alcoholics talk about having their demons, I think that they’re probably absolutely literally correct.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

The Believer interview (2013)

Life, God, People, Alcohol

“I thought that, that side of [Rudd's] character – the very anxious, 'I must be in the media, I must shine in Parliament today' – would fall away when he became Labor leader and there was no more fighting for the spotlight; the spotlight was well and truly on him.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

The Killing Season, Episode one: The Prime Minister and his Loyal Deputy (2006–09)

Fight

“The amazing number of species; their curious forms, so infinitely varied, and yet so nearly and gradually approximating through an endless series of transitions from one species to another; the diversity of structure observable in those parts which afford generic characters, added to the wonderful changes in form which they undergo, with their surprising economy - are circumstances which contribute to render them objects of most curious speculation to the philosopher. And although the study of every class of animals is most indisputably attended with peculiar advantages, yet we shall venture to affirm, that is from a knowledge of the characters, metamorphoses, and various modes of life, this little animals are destined to pursue, that [the natural philosopher] will obtain a more intimate acquaintance with the great laws of nature, and veneration for the Great Creator of all, that can be derived from the contemplation of any other class in nature.”

William Elford Leach (1790–1836) English zoologist and marine biologist

As quoted in Entomology https://archive.org/stream/CUbiodiversity1121039#page/646/mode/2up/search/creator (1816), Volume 8 of the first American edition of Sir David Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, p. 646.

Life, Law, Nature, Knowledge

“Reason … contradicts the established order of men and things on behalf of existing societal forces that reveal the irrational character of this order — for “rational” is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 141-142

Men

“And what have our unions done? What do they aim to do? To improve the standard of life, to uproot ignorance and foster education, to instill character, manhood and independent spirit among our people; to bring about a recognition of the interdependence of man upon his fellow man. We aim to establish a normal work-day, to take the children from the factory and workshop and give them the opportunity of the school and the play-ground. In a word, our unions strive to lighten toil, educate their members, make their homes more cheerful, and in every way contribute an earnest effort toward making life the better worth living.”

Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) American Labor Leader[AFL]

Gompers, Samuel. "Gompers Speaks for Labor." McClure's Magazine, February 1912, p. 376 http://books.google.com/books?id=3Su0lykF-OMC&dq=%22And%20what%20have%20our%20unions%20done%3F%20What%20do%20they%20aim%20to%20do%3F%22&pg=PA376#v=onepage&q=%22And%20what%20have%20our%20unions%20done?%20What%20do%20they%20aim%20to%20do?%22&f=false

Life, Children, People, Education

“What are novels? What is the secret of the charm of every romance that ever was written? The first thing in a good novel is to place the persons together in circumstances which naturally call out the high feelings and thoughts of the character, which afford food for sympathy between them on these points — romantic events they are called. The second is that the heroine has generally no family ties (almost invariably no mother), or, if she has, these do not interfere with her entire independence.
These two things constitute the main charm of reading novels.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Secret, Family, Food, Feeling

“I've been killing characters my entire career, maybe I'm just a bloody minded bastard, I don't know, [but] when my characters are in danger, I want you to be afraid to turn the page (and to do that) you need to show right from the beginning that you're playing for keeps.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

Audio Interview http://www.geekson.com/archives/archiveepisodes/2006/episode080406.htm with Geekson http://www.geekson.com in Episode 54, (4 August 2006)

“As an actor… we all have our own methods and approaches to creating a character, whether that's from the inside going in or vice versa. I spoke, mainly, to the executive producer Bill Dozier. We got along very well and we really shared the same ideas about the show, what it could and should be. We knew to play it on several levels - something that could be lasting for the children but also with funny, social satire for the adults.”

Adam West (1928–2017) American actor

"Adam West interview: on being Batman" http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/batman/241310/adam-west-interview-on-being-batman by Brendon Connelly, Den of Geek, (November 14, 2014)

Children, Idea

“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.”

Robert Kilroy-Silk (1942) British politician

Sunday Express, 4 May 2003

Women, Men, People, Law

“No one of good character leaves behind a wasted life — whether they die in obscurity or renown. "Character," wrote the 19th Century evangelist, Dwight Moody, "is what you are in the dark." Your character is not tested on occasions of public scrutiny or acclaim. It is not tested in moments when the object of your actions is the regard of another. Your character is what you are to yourself, not what you pretend to be to yourself or others. Although human beings often attempt self-delusion, we cannot forever hide the truth about ourselves from ourselves. It will make itself known to us by means of our conscience despite our most strenuous effort to suppress it.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

1990s, Speech at Ohio Wesleyan University (1997)

Life, Truth, Effort

“The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

citation needed The earliest quotations of this give it as anonymous or unknown author. https://books.google.com/books?id=hPIsAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA321&dq=%22what+he+would+do+if+he+knew+it+would+never+be+found+out%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIlvi0prz_xwIVTwaSCh0hVwX5#v=onepage&q=%22what%20he%20would%20do%20if%20he%20knew%20it%20would%20never%20be%20found%20out%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=i2MPAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA16-IA71&dq=%22what+he+would+do+if+he+knew+it+would+never+be+found+out%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIkMmp8rz_xwIV1BGSCh25lAO0#v=onepage&q=%22what%20he%20would%20do%20if%20he%20knew%20it%20would%20never%20be%20found%20out%22&f=false Attributed

“But Hess is not a man of strong character. He may be capable of a great sacrifice. But simple, straightforward opposition, when he considers that something wrong is being done, is not for him… He often acted as he did in my conflict with the party against his own better judgment. He kept silence. He capitulated to the demands of the party.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: Men in Chaos (1942), p. 56

Strong, Silence

“In one point the plan was fatally defective, since it involved the deadly enmity of a race whose character and whose power were as yet but ill understood,--the fiercest, boldest, most politic, and most ambitious savages to whom the American forest has ever given birth.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. II, Ch. 13 Discovery of Lake Huron
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Birth

“The heath and changes of weather were quite blotted out from their eyes for the present. They were enclosed in a sort of luminous mist, which hid from them surroundings of any inharmonious colour, and gave to all things the character of light. When it rained they were charmed, because they could remain indoors together all day with such a show of reason; when it was fine they were charmed, because they could sit together on the hills. They were like those double stars which revolve round and round each other, and from a distance appear to be one.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. IV, ch. 1
The Return of the Native (1878)

Star, Light, Appearance, Change

“…soldierly simplicity of character that has always represented the military at its best. In the higher ranks it is different. The higher a man is placed, the broader his point of view. Different interests and a wide variety of passions, good and bad, will arise on all sides. Envy and generosity, pride and humility, wrath and compassion - all may appear as effective forces in this great drama.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 2

Appearance, Passion, Envy

“We know that this election is about the kind of America we will live in and the kind of America we will leave to future generations. When it comes to the character of America, President Obama and I have very different visions. Government is at the center of his vision. It dispenses the benefits, borrows what it cannot take, and consumes a greater and greater share of the economy. With Obamacare fully installed, government will come to control half the economy, and we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society. This President is putting us on a path where our lives will be ruled by bureaucrats and boards, commissions and czars. He's asking us to accept that Washington knows best – and can provide all.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-04-24
http://electad.com/video/mitt-romney-victory-speech-after-winning-de-ct-pa-ny-pa-primaries-in-manchester-new-hampshire-april-24-2012/
Mitt Romney Victory Speech After Winning DE / CT / PA / NY / PA Primaries in Manchester, New Hampshire – April 24 2012
ElectAd
2012

Future

“What a man! I have lost my heart! … If I were Italian, I am sure I would have been with you entirely from the beginning of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passion of Leninism. … Your movement has rendered a service to the whole world. The greatest fear that ever tormented every Democratic or Socialist leader was that of being outbid or surpassed by some other leader more extreme than himself. It has been said that a continual movement to the Left, a kind of fatal landslide toward the abyss, has been the character of all revolutions. Italy has shown that there is a way to combat subversive forces.”

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

On Benito Mussolini and Italian Fascism, in a press statement from Rome (20 January 1927), quoted in Churchill by Himself : The Definitive Collection of Quotations (2011) by Richard Langworth, p. 169
Early career years (1898–1929)

World, Fear, Way, Passion

“Back at the Philadelphia Worldcon (which seems a million years ago), I announced the famous five-year gap: I was going to skip five years forward in the story, to allow some of the younger characters to grow older and the dragons to grow larger, and for various other reasons. I started out writing on that basis in 2001, and it worked very well for some of my myriad characters but not at all for others, because you can't just have nothing happen for five years. If things do happen you have to write flashbacks, a lot of internal retrospection, and that's not a good way to present it. I struggled with that essentially wrong direction for about a year before finally throwing it out, realizing there had to be another interim book. That became A Feast for Crows, where the action is pretty much continuous from the preceding book. Even so, that only accounts for one year. Why the four after that? I don't know, except that this was a very tough book to write -- and it remains so, because I've only finished half. Going in, I thought I could do something about the length of the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings, roughly 1,200 pages in manuscript. But I passed that and there was a lot more to write. Then I passed the length of the third book, A Storm of Swords, which was something like 1,500 pages in manuscript and gave my publishers all around the world lots of production problems. I didn't really want to make any cuts because I had this huge story to tell. We started thinking about dividing it in two and doing it as A Feast for Crows, Parts One and Two, but the more I thought about that the more I really did not like it. Part One would have had no resolution whatsoever for 18 viewpoint characters and their 18 stories. Of course this is all part of a huge megaseries so there is not a complete resolution yet in any of the volumes, but I try to give a certain sense of completion at the end of each volume -- that a movement of the symphony has wrapped up, so to speak.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

Interview with Locus magazine (November 2005)

Books, World, Way, Problem

“From the time of Zeno to Simplicius, a period of about nine hundred years, the Stoic philosophy formed the characters of some of the best and greatest men. Finally it became extinct, and we hear no more of it til the revival of letters in Italy.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

M. Aurelius Antoninus

Men, Time

“many women, especially as a result of social and cultural conditioning, do not become fully aware of their dignity. Others are victims of a materialistic and hedonistic outlook which views them as mere objects of pleasure, and does not hesitate to organize the exploitation of women, even of young girls, into a despicable trade. Special concern needs to be shown for these women, particularly by other women who, thanks to their own upbringing and sensitivity, are able to help them discover their own inner worth and resources. Women need to help women, and to find support in the valuable and effective contributions which associations, movements and groups, many of them of a religious character, have proved capable of making in this regard.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Message for the XXVIII World Day of Peace, 8 December 1994 Source: www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_08121994_xxviii-world-day-for-peace_en.html

Women, Pleasure, Girl, Support

“The landscape painter, perhaps, goes even further. It is not only in living beings that he sees the reflection of the universal soul; it is in the trees, the bushes, the valleys, the hills. What to other men is only wood and earth appears to the great landscapist like the face of a great being. Corot saw kindness abroad in the trunks of the trees, in the grass of the fields, in the mirroring water of the lakes. But there Millet read suffering and resignation.
Everywhere the great artist hears spirit answer to his spirit. Where, then, can you find a more religious man?
Does not the sculptor perform his act of adoration when he perceives the majestic character of the forms that he studies? — when, from the midst of fleeting lines, he knows how to extricate the eternal type of each being? — when he seems to discern in the very breast of the divinity the immutable models on which all living creatures are moulded? Study, for example, the masterpieces of the Egyptian sculptors, either human or animal figures, and tell me if the accentuation of the essential lines does not produce the effect of a sacred hymn. Every artist who has the gift of generalizing forms, that is to say, of accenting their logic without depriving them of their living reality, provokes the same religious emotion; for he communicates to us the thrill he himself felt before the immortal verities.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Art, 1912, Ch. Mystery in Art

Men, Soul, Communication, Reality

“The dominant tradition in the sociology of art… defines art as something more special, in which creativity comes to the surface and the essential character if the society expresses itself, especially in the great work of the genius.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p.xi.

Art

“While we find such endless differences between the actions of different men under the same temptations, or of the same man at different times, we shall yet be unable to find any link of the chain undetermined by the action of the outward circumstance on the inner law; or any point where we can say a power lay in the individual will of choosing either of two courses — in other words, to discover sin. Actions are governed by motives. The power of motives depends on character, and character on the original faculties and the training which they have received from the men or things among which they have been bred.
Sin, therefore, as commonly understood, is a chimera.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Fragments of Markham's notes
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Men, Law, Motivation, Time

“In the ceremonies of the public execution, the main character was the people, whose real and immediate presence was required for the performance.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter One, pp. 56

People

“Meyerbeer's approach to opera may seem cynical. His music is not, like Donizetti's, an immediate expression of the sentiments of his characters but a calculated manipulation of the audience.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 11 : Romantic Opera: Politics, Trash, and High Art

Music

“In a situation where you become so great without God’s character, it means the end is going to be bad.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

God

“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.”

Edmund White book A Boy's Own Story

Source: A Boy's Own Story (1982), Chapter One (p. 14).

Women, World

“I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say it, you CANNOT conquer America… As to conquest, therefore, my Lords, I repeat, it is impossible. You may swell every expense, and every effort, still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent— doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies— to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms, never! never! never!… I call upon the honour of your Lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble Lord frowns with indignation at THE DISGRACE OF HIS COUNTRY! In vain he led your victorious fleets against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honour, the liberties, the religion, the Protestant religion of his country, against the arbitrary cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech in the House of Lords (18 November, 1777), responding to a speech by Henry Howard, 12th Earl of Suffolk, who spoke in favour of the war against the American colonists. Suffolk was a descendant of Howard of Effingham, who led the English navy against the Spanish Armada. Effingham had commissioned a series of tapestries on the defeat of the Armada, and sold them to King James I. Since 1650 they were hung in the House of Lords, where they remained until destroyed by fire in 1834.
William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), pp. 150-6.

Religion, Effort, Victory, Country

“In the army, capitalist development leads to the extension of obligatory military service to the reduction of the time of service and consequently to a material approach to a popular militia. But all of this takes place under the form of modern militarism in which the domination of the people by the militarist State and the class character of the State manifest themselves most clearly.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Source: Reform or Revolution (1899), Ch.8

People, Time

Quotes about character page 18

Quotes about character
page 18