Quotes about character
page 19

“A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

Truth, Knowledge

“What do we mean by spiritual development? Surely, the broadening and deepening of the mind till it regards the world in its true perspective, and the strengthening of the character so that the will is a tempered and unerring weapon in the charge of a man's soul. And this end is to be achieved only by the exercise of the mind upon the largest possible manifold of experience, and by the conflict of character with the alien forces of the world.”

John Buchan book A Lodge in the Wilderness

Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. XII, pp. 336–7

World, Exercises, Soul

“[…] I observed he [Samuel Johnson] poured a large quantity of it [wine] into a glass, and swallowed it greedily. Everything about his character and manners was forcible and violent; there never was any moderation; many a day did he fast, many a year did he refrain from wine; but when he did eat, it was voraciously; when he did drink wine, it was copiously. He could practise abstinence, but not temperance.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

March 1781
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)

Drink, Wine

“The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thicksighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.”

John Keats Endymion

Preface
Endymion (1818)

Life, Men, Way, Soul

“Deep inside, I am a shy man. And in the presence of colorful characters, I am a clam. I never try to out-eccentric the eccentricsǃ”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

As quoted in "New York Close-Up" http://www.mediafire.com/view/sllj68n3ug6dgju/Concert_Thursday_to_Aid_Memori.jpg.

Color

“The Anarchists' uncompromising rejection of the State, the subject of Marxian sneers for its "absolutist" and "Utopian" character, makes much better sense in the present era than the Marxist relativist and historical approach. The pacifists also seem to be more realistic than the Marxist both in their understanding of modern war and also in their attempts to do something about it…”

Dwight Macdonald (1906–1982) journalist

"The Root is Man" (1946).

War, Understanding, Sense

“Perhaps I never truly understood the term "torture porn" until watching this movie. The various demented killings, maimings, and other assorted indignities performed upon characters (most of them comely women) are designed with one objective in mind: to get people off. Make no mistake about it - this is masturbation material for those who enjoy this sort of thing. … Watching Captivity is like observing a 45-minute psychological rape. Rarely have I found myself so uncomfortable viewing anything over such an extended period of time. There's nothing redeemable here. It's not tense or scary; it's just demented - Directed by Roland Joffé.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=604 of Captivity (2007). Zero star reviews

Women, People, Time

“Show me the professing Christian whose social character is as unlovely after profession as it was before, and though there may be an increase of knowledge and of some other things connected with religion, there is no progress.”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 116.

Religion, Knowledge

“It is not in the calm and measured paths of to day that we see the more bold and pronounced characters, whose outlines have been rough-hewn by the strong hand of necessity; yet to such troubled times often belong the development of our noblest and best qualities — the stormy gulf of Ormus throws up the finest pearls. It is not in the season of tranquility that we know aught of the generous devotion, the fertility of resource, and the forgetfulness of self often shown in the hour of trial. When the French revolution broke out, how many, only accustomed to indolence, luxury, and custom, showed that "there was iron in the rose;" and, whether at the call of duty or of affection, were prepared to bear even to the uttermost, and to exert a fortitude till then undreamed of.”

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

Literary Remains

Strong, Time, Forgetting, Season

“It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter VII: "On the Races of Man", page 225 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=238&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

“It is essentially to the very idea and concept of organization that we there must be a process, formal in character, through which the supreme co-ordinating authority operates throughout the whole structure of the organized body. This process is not an abstraction; it is a tangible reality observable in every organization. It appears in a form so distinct and characteristic that it practically names itself, — hence the term Scalar Process.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 31

Idea, Reality, Appearance

“Yes, because that conceals their character. You don't know who you are talking to. Who you are dealing with. So, the face should be seen. That is even in Islam, even during the time of the holy Prophet Mohammed, women used to have bare faces. I mean women did not cover their faces.”

Maumoon Abdul Gayoom (1937) Maldivian politician, 3rd president of the Maldives

When asked by al jazeera journalist, Juliana Ruhfus (in an interview on 8 August 2007) that there is a law (in Maldives) that women are not allowed to wear a dress that only shows the eyes.
2007

Women, Time

“Keep clear of personalities in conversation. Talk of things, objects, thoughts. The smallest minds occupy themselves with persons. Do not needlessly report ill of others. As far as possible, dwell on the good side of human beings. There are family boards where a constant process of depreciating, assigning motives, and cutting up character, goes forward. They are not pleasant places. One who is healthy does not wish to dine at a dissecting table. There is evil enough in man, God knows. But it is not the mission of every young man and woman to detail and report it all. Keep the atmosphere as pure as possible, and fragrant with gentleness and charity.”

John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 214.

God, Family, Motivation, Evil

“Lincoln seemed to me to be familiar with the name, character, and reputation of every officer of rank in the army and navy, and appeared to understand them better than some whose business it was to do so; he had many a good story to tell of nearly all, and if he could have lived to write the anecdotes of the war, I am sure he would have furnished the most readable book of the century. To me he was one of the most interesting men I ever met; he had an originality about him which was peculiarly his own, and one felt, when with him, as if he could confide his dearest secret to him with absolute security against its betrayal. There, it might be said, was 'God's noblest work an honest man,' and such he was, all through. I have not a particle of the bump of veneration on my head, but I saw more to admire in this man, more to reverence, than I had believed possible; he had a load to bear that few men could carry, yet he traveled on with it, foot-sore and weary, but without complaint; rather; on the contrary, cheering those who would faint on the roadside. He was not a demonstrative man, so no one will ever know, amid all the trials he underwent, how much he had to contend with, and how often he was called upon to sacrifice his own opinions to those of others, who, he felt, did not know as much about matters at issue as he did himself. When he did surrender, it was always with a pleasant manner, winding up with a characteristic story.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 283

Men, God, War, Secret

“The scientific abstraction from concreteness, the quantification of qualities which yield exactness as well as universal validity, involve a specific concrete experience of the Lebenswelt—a specific mode of “seeing” the world. And this “seeing,” in spite of its “pure,” disinterested character, is seeing within a purposive, practical context. It is anticipating (Voraussehen) and projecting (Vorhaben). Galilean science is the science of methodical, systematic anticipation and projection. But—and this is decisive—of a specific anticipation and projection—namely, that which experiences, comprehends, and shapes the world) in terms of calculable, predictable relationships among exactly identifiable units. In this project, universal quantifiability is a prerequisite for the domination of nature. Individual, non-quantifiable qualities stand in the way of an organization of men and things in accordance with the measurable power to be extracted from them. But this is a specific, socio-historical project, and the consciousness which undertakes this project is the hidden subject of Galilean science.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

[describing the view of Husserl] p. 164
One-Dimensional Man (1964)

Men, World, Way, Nature

“It is because these characters depend to such a high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a movement inward that makes them whole. Their reward is not happiness — a word that is central in Austen's novels but is seldom used in James's universe. What James's characters gain is self-respect.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

On Henry James and his novels
Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

Sense, Universe, Victory, Dependency

“With these examples before you, you should aspire to nobility of character, and not only abide by what I have said, but acquaint yourself with the best things in the poets as well, and learn from the other wise men also any useful lessons they have taught. For just as we see the bee settling on all the flowers, and sipping the best from each, so also those who aspire to culture ought not to leave anything untasted, but should gather useful knowledge from every source. For hardly even with these pains can they overcome the defects of nature.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verses 51-52.
To Demonicus

Men, Pain, Flowers, Nature

“In a piece written circa 1960 called 'The Twelve Caesars' he said that world events were the work of individuals and that the motives of those individuals were often frivolous, even casual. There is something of Suetonius and Plutarch in Vidal's unblushing readiness to view contemporary history in terms of character.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Unpatriotic Gore: Gore Vidal'
Essays and reviews, At the Pillars of Hercules (1979)

World, History, Motivation

“Weave the warp, and weave the woof,
The winding sheet of Edward's race.
Give ample room and verge enough,
The Characters of hell to trace.”

Thomas Gray The Bard

II. 1. lines 49-52
The Bard (1757)

Hell

“Four a. m., having just returned from an evening at the Golden Spheres, which despite the inconveniences of heat, noise and overcrowding was not without its pleasures. Thankfully, there were no dogs and no children. The gowns were middling. There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate, however, people were very free with their compliments and I made several new acquaintances. There was Lindsay Doran of Mirage, wherever that might be, who is largely responsible for my presence here, an enchanting companion about whom too much good cannot be said. Mr. Ang Lee, of foreign extraction, who most unexpectedly appeared to understand me better than I understand myself. Mr. James Shamis, a most copiously erudite person and Miss Kate Winslet, beautiful in both countenance and spirit. Mr. Pat Doyle, a composer and a Scot, who displayed the kind of wild behaviour one has learned to expect from that race. Mr. Mark Kenton, an energetic person with a ready smile who, as I understand it, owes me a great deal of money. [Breaks character, smiles. ] TRUE!! [Back in character. ] Miss Lisa Henson of Columbia, a lovely girl and Mr. Garrett Wiggin, a lovely boy. I attempted to converse with Mr. Sydney Pollack, but his charms and wisdom are so generally pleasing, that it proved impossible to get within ten feet of him. The room was full of interesting activity until 11 p. m. when it emptied rather suddenly. The lateness of the hour is due, therefore, not to the dance, but to the waiting in a long line for a horseless carriage of unconscionable size. The modern world has clearly done nothing for transport.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Golden Globe Award Speech

Love, Wisdom, Money, Children

“… language has evolved in the service of particular human needs … what is really significant is that this functional principle is carried over and built into the grammar, so that the internal organization of the grammar system is also functional in character.”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Source: 1970s and later, Learning How to Mean--Explorations in the Development of Language, 1975, p. 16 cited in Constant Leung, Brian V. Street (2012) English a Changing Medium for Education. p. 5.

“Tagore claims that the first time he experienced the thrill of poetry was when he encountered the children’s rhyme ‘Jal pare/pata nare’ (‘Rain falls / The leaf trembles') in Iswarchandra Vidyasagar’s Bengali primer Barna Parichay (Introducing the Alphabet). There are at least two revealing things about this citation. The first is that, as Bengali scholars have remarked, Tagore’s memory, and predilection, lead him to misquote and rewrite the lines. The actual rhyme is in sadhu bhasha, or ‘high’ Bengali: ‘Jal paritechhe / pata naritechhe’ (‘Rain falleth / the leaf trembleth’). This is precisely the sort of diction that Tagore chose for the English Gitanjali, which, with its thees and thous, has so tried our patience. Yet, as a Bengali poet, Tagore’s instinct was to simplify, and to draw language closer to speech. The other reason the lines of the rhyme are noteworthy, especially with regard to Tagore, is – despite their deceptively logical progression – their non-consecutive character. ‘Rain falls’ and ‘the leaf trembles’ are two independent, stand-alone observations: they don’t necessarily have to follow each other. It’s a feature of poetry commented upon by William Empson in Some Versions of Pastoral: that it’s a genre that can get away with seamlessly joining two lines which are linked, otherwise, tenuously.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

On Tagore: Reading the Poet Today (2012)

Children, Memory, Time, Drawing

“The more there is of mind in your solitary employments, the more dignity there is in your character.”

James Morris III (1752–1820) American writer

As quoted in [Strong, Barbara Nolen, The Morris Academy: Pioneer in Coeducation, Morris Bicentennial Committee, 1976, Torrington, 14-15, http://books.google.com/books?id=nrCYGQAACAAJ&dq]

“In order to see the relation between philosophy as rigorous science and the alternative to it clearly, one must look at the political conflict between the two antagonists, i. e. at the essential character of that conflict.”

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

Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy (1971)

Science

“villas with columns in different styles [in Louisiana, America] painted white, in gardens of magnolias, orange trees, banana trees, negroes in old clothes like characters from La Belle Jardiniere.... rosy white children in black [negro] arms.... a brilliant light which streams my eyes.... the Negresses of all shades, holding in their arms little white babies, so white, against white houses with columns of fluted wood and in gardens of orange trees.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

quote on his journey through America during 1872
Quote from his letter, Louisiana, America 1872; as cited in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 113-114
1855 - 1875

Children, Quotes, Tree, Light

“Unique descriptions of scene play a significant role in the success of fiction, and any first-rate novelists knows enough to keep changing the scenes in which his characters carry out action, since that no only conceals the novelist's shortcomings, but also heightens the reader's enthuisiasm in the reading process”

Mo Yan book The Republic of Wine

Source: The Republic of Wine (1992), Chapter 10, Section 2

Change, Reading, Success

“The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

New York Times (October 9, 1985)

“Our empirical criterion for a series of theories is that it should produce new facts. The idea of growth and the concept of empirical character are soldered into one.”

Imre Lakatos (1921–1974) Hungarian mathematician, philosopher

Source: Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, 1970, p. 119.

Idea

“My characters are ambiguous. Call them that. I don't mind. I am ambiguous myself. Who isn't?”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

“Taking again as an example the need to appear perfect, I would be interested primarily in understanding what this trend accomplishes for the individual (eliminating conflicts with others and making him feel superior to others), and also what consequences the trend has on his character and his life. The latter investigation would make it possible to understand, for example, how such a person anxiously conforms with expectations and standards to the extent of becoming a mere automaton, and yet subversively defies them; how this double play results in listlessness and inertia; how he is proud of his apparent independence, yet actually is entirely dependent on the expectations and opinions of others; how he is terrified lest anyone should discover the flimsiness of his moral strivings and the duplicity which has pervaded his life; how this in turn has made him seclusive and hypersensitive to criticism.”

Karen Horney book New Ways in Psychoanalysis

New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939) pp. 281

Life, Feeling, Understanding, Appearance

“.. more significant, perhaps, was the fact that during the war [1940-1945] many of the Surrealists came [from Europe] to America and we were able to see them as just other human beings like ourselves and not as mythical characters who had superhuman capacities and talents. I think that there was a feeling after meeting them [a. o. Marcel Duchamp, Andre Masson, André Breton, Max Ernst ] personally that, well, if these men can have these great achievements and talents, there is hope for us [younger American artists]”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Quote of Gottlieb, in an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Living Arts', June 1963; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 29
1960s

Men, War, Hope, Feeling

“Today a host of foreigners unprecedented in number and unparalleled in character is living and working in Germary like a gigantic pump, the new German Reich is sucking in all it resources of Europe and masses of Europe's working population.”

Eugene M. Kulischer (1881–1956) American sociologist

Source: The Displacement Of Population In Europe, 1943, p. 164

“It is indeed very possible, that the Persons we laugh at may in the main of their Characters be much wiser Men than our selves; but if they would have us laugh at them, they must fall short of us in those Respects which stir up this Passion.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 47 (24 April 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Men, Passion, Personality

“Why are […] female characters in combat roles wearing high-heels? With all the fighting, running and climbing these women have to do, dressing them in high-heels is clearly a decision rooted in sexualized aesthetic pleasure rather than believability.”

Anita Sarkeesian (1983) American blogger

Body Language & The Male Gaze (Mar 31, 2016)
Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (Feminist Frequency, 2013 - 2015)

Women, Pleasure, Decision, Fight

“The case had caused considerable excitement among the “believers” (Mu'mins) and interest among the “infidels” (KAfirs) in April-May, 1985. The press in India and abroad gave many headlines to what was rightly regarded as an unprecedented event in the history of religion. It was the first time that a Pagan had questioned the character of a document hailed as the very Word of God by a People of the Book. The roles now stood reversed. So far it had been the privilege of the Peoples of the Book to ban and burn the sacred literature of the Pagans.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

God, People, Books, Religion

“Many of the Bible characters fell just in the things in which they were thought to be strongest. Moses failed in his humility, Abraham in his faith, Elijah in his courage, for one woman scared him away to that juniper-tree; and Peter, whose strong point was boldness, was so frightened by a maid, as to deny his Lord.”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 532.

Faith, Courage, Tree, Strong

“experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinions and character. In the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on which I had before acted, and having much in common with what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-consciousness theory of Carlyle.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/141/mode/1up pp. 141-142

Time, Life

“Abu Hurayra stated, "The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "The most perfect of believers in belief is the best of them in character. The best of you are those who are the best to their women."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 2, hadith number 278
Sunni Hadith

Women, Peace, Perfection

“[begins the game; gets startled by the enemy character flying away from him] "Okay—UH! …Well, that startled the crap outta me."”

Markiplier (1989) American YouTuber and Internet personality

Video game commentary, SuperHOT prototype (September 15, 2013) Source: SuperHOT, Markiplier, wikipedia:Markiplier, September 15, 2013, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7qY7s1tCtU, Source: SUPERHOT - an FPS where time moves only when you move, 2014, July 9, 2014 http://superhotgame.com,

Game, Flying

“(discussing the Alfred Hitchcock film Saboteur): …I saw when I was young that, in fact, when you got to the top or toward the top of things, you found, indeed, very flawed but glamorous people, people who were, in fact, not thinking about the kinds of problems that the blind man was thinking about in 1943, not acting intuitively and bravely and in some kind of harmony with nature as that blind man in Saboteur was acting, and certainly not taking on impossible tasks. People were acting in a kind of what I’ve come to call a deutero-Hemingway way: they were preserving their own vitality by being adventurous within the media. The James Stewart character is someone who roams the world, but with a camera, not a gun, and not like Schweitzer, setting up modes of change in impossible places. He’s touring the world adventurously in the interest of preserving his masculine independence, but he’s doing it with a camera.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

My Pilgrim’s Progress (1999)

People, World, Way, Nature

“A lot of people in America think that I’m Irish. Then, of course, in The Mummy the character that I played was supposed to be quintessentially English. And then after The Hurricane people out there are really confused. They now think I’m Canadian… well, sort of”

John Hannah (actor) (1962) Scottish actor

Hannah’s Life on the High Wire http://www.johnhannah.net/interview00.php#tic(May 6, 2000)

People, Thinking

“Our first of poets was one of our first of men. He was an eminent instance to prove that a poet is not another name for the slave of power and fashion … who merely aspire to make up the pageant and show of the day. There are persons in common life who … can so little bear to be left for any length of time out of the grand carnival and masquerade of pride and folly, that they will gain admittance to it at the expense of their characters … Milton was not one of these. He had lofty contemplative principle, and consciousness of inward power and worth, [not] to be tempted by such idle baits.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Milton's Sonnets" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Life, Men, Fashion, Time

“I have separate lists titled by characters in which I list each scene concerning that character consecutively and also the proposed scenes for that character along with notes of how I want to write it. So I take these and by them map out ahead the final draft, interlacing the scenes between various characters. Wonderful, isn't it? If I fail as a writer, I can always become a bookkeeper.
I have always been bothered because I couldn't remember details of time, place, etc. and I used to find myself either surrounded by reams of written pages, or else rewriting the same thing three or four times. This helps somewhat to alleviate that.”

James Jones (1921–1977) American author

Letter to Maxwell Perkins (21 October 1946); p. 78
To Reach Eternity (1989)

Time, Help

“Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of the character, though few can decypher even fragments of their meaning.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

1840s, Letters from New York (1843) Source: Letters from New York http://www.bartleby.com/66/58/12260.html, vol. 1, letter 26

Love, Men, Beauty, Angels

“I’m always looking for opportunities to explore that freewheeling imagination and insanity of children. To be able to plug in to that and let that carry you in to a performance is such a gas, I have so much fun with that. I love kids; I raised two girls and I love being a parent. Being a parent is hands down the greatest thing of my life, and I loved when they were young because as a parent you can spend that special time with them when they’re young and you can attach your imagination on to their ride and go with them and do what they’re doing. I always loved that and it’s kind of how I approach Patrick. I don’t know if this makes sense, but I guess that’s my approach and that’s what I continue to do because I’m so fortunate to keep going with this character. It’s very satisfying and enjoyable.”

Bill Fagerbakke (1957) American actor

Interview With Bill Fagerbakke: The Voice of Spongebob's Patrick Star http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/spongebob-squarepants/225197/interview-with-bill-fagerbakke-the-voice-of-spongebobs-patrick-star (November 11, 2013)

Love, Life, Children, Imagination

“The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Hamlet, Don Quixote, Mr. Pickwick and others
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

Life, Death, Men, Memory

“The administration of government lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence.”

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

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Men, Way

“The Sovereign of the universe was not alone in His work of beneficence. He had an associate—a co-worker who could appreciate His purposes, and could share His joy in giving happiness to created beings. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” John 1:1, 2. Christ, the Word, the only begotten of God, was one with the eternal Father—one in nature, in character, in purpose—the only being that could enter into all the counsels and purposes of God. “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6. His “goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” Micah 5:2. And the Son of God declares concerning Himself: “The Lord possessed Me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting. … When He appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.””

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Proverbs 8:22-30. Patriarchs and Prophets 34.1 https://egwwritings.org/?ref=en_PP.34.1&para=84.75

God, Peace, Way, Nature

“I admit, that the commonplace man can never, by copying, produce a masterpiece; he notes every detail but he does not really see - the artist penetrates below the surface into the very heart of nature; for him everything is beautiful because beauty in art consists of character.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

RODIN, AUGUSTE. L'Art. Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell, 1911

Beauty, Art, Nature, Heart

“An infant crying in the crib can better appreciate the character of its mother than we can fathom the full nature of God.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

God, Nature, Cry

“Speaking purely for myself, I can say that it was my very acute feeling for the matière, for the substance of painting, which pushed me into thinking about the possibilities of the medium. I wanted to create a kind of substance by means of brush-work. But that is the kind of discovery which one makes gradually, though once a beginning had been made other discoveries follow. Thus it was that I subsequently began to introduce sand, sawdust and metal filings into my pictures. For I suddenly saw the extent to which colour is related to the substance... So my great delight was the 'material' character which I could give to my pictures by introducing these extraneous elements. In short, they provided me with a means of getting further away from idealism in 'representing' the things with which I was concerned.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1921 - 1945, p. 76 - quote of Braque from 'Cahiers d'art', 1954, ed. Dora Vallier

Feeling, Thinking, Painting

“Nature is to us like an inﬁnite ballot-box, the contents of which are being continually drawn, ball after ball, and exhibited to us. Science is but the careful observation of the succession in which balls of various character present themselves; we register the combinations, notice those which seem to be excluded from occurrence, and from the proportional frequency of those which usually appear we infer the probable character of future drawings.”

William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) English economist and logician

Source: The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method (1874) Vol. 1, p. 169

Nature, Appearance, Science, Success

“Business cycles are a type of fluctuation found in the aggregate activity of nations that organize their work mainly in business enterprises: a cycle consists of expansions occurring at about the same time in many economic activities, followed by similarly general recessions, contractions, and revivals which merge into the expansion phase of the next cycle; this sequence of changes is recurrent but not periodic; in duration business cycles vary from more than one year to ten or twelve years; they are not divisible into shorter cycles of similar character with amplitudes approximating their own.”

Arthur F. Burns (1904–1987) American economist and diplomat

Arthur F. Burns and George W. Mitchell (1946). Measuring business cycles. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. p. 3; Cited in: Robert J. Gordon, ed. The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change, 1986. p. 2

Business, Change, Time

“Maulana Muhammad Ali wrote:… Some Mussulman friends have been constantly flinging at me the charge of being a… Gandhi-worshipper… Since I hold Islam to be the highest gift of God, therefore, I was impelled by the love I bear towards Mahatmaji to pray to God that he might illumine his soul with the true light of Islam… As a follower of Islam I am bound to regard the creed of Islam as superior to that professed by the followers of any non-Islamic religion. And in this sense, the creed of even a fallen and degraded Mussulman is entitled to a higher place than that of any other non-Muslim irrespective of his high character, even though the person in question be Mahatma Gandhi himself”

Muhammad Ali (writer) (1874–1951) Pakistani scholar and leading figure of the Ahmadiyya Movement

Gandhi’s reaction was: “In my humble opinion the Maulana has proved the purity of his heart and his faith in his own religion by expressing his view. He merely compared two sets of religious principles and gave his opinion as to which was better” (Navajivan, 13.4.1924).
(Young India, 10.4.1924). Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 8

Love, God, Religion, Soul

“Now a nation’s character is in its literature.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Literature

“They (the emperors) frequently abused their power arbitrarily to deprive their subjects of property or of life: their tyranny was extremely onerous to the few, but it did not reach the greater number;.. But it would seem that if despotism were to be established amongst the democratic nations of our days it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild, it would degrade men without tormenting them.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Four, Chapter VI.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Four

Life, Men

“My whole intention in painting is to make a thing poetical; but not poetical in a literary sense. I want something that evokes mood, a background, a stage set for certain characters that are playing certain parts. When I paint I do not consider myself an abstractionist in the sense that I'm trying to create beautiful forms that fit together like a puzzle. The things in my painting are intended to strike something that is an emotional involvement – that has to do with the human personality and all the mysteries of life, not simply colors or abstract balances. To me, it's all reality.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

Quote from An interview with William Baziotes, eds. P. Franks and M. White, Perspective no. 2, Hunter College New York (1956-57), pp. 27, 29-30
1950s

Life, Beauty, Color, Mood

“Do not smile at my advice -- the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature. Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

"The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany" (1834)

World, Smile, History, Nature

“With regard to politics and the character of princes and great men, I think I am very moderate. My views of things are more conformable to Whig principles; my representation of persons to Tory prejudices. Nothing can so much prove that men commonly regard more persons than things, as to find that I am commonly numbered among the Tories.”

David Hume (1711–1776) Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian

E. C. Mossner, Life of David Hume (Clarendon Press, 2001), p. 311.

Men, Thinking, Personality

“The man that makes a character makes foes.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

To Mr. Pope, epistle I, l. 28 (1730).

“[On the importance of positive representations of LGBT people in the media] You know, I don't think it's helpful to anyone to… for example, say that every LGBT person is wonderful and perfect and without flaw, and lets all ring the bells to perfection. I think it's much more helpful to tell the story as truthfully as you can, and with all of its complications, because that's also when people recognize themselves, and that's when people who are not part of the LGBT community will recognize themselves within that character. And then [they] hopefully empathize and maybe there'll be some kind of shift.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview on matthewsplace.com (October 2009) http://www.matthewsplace.com/2009/10/interview-with-jennifer-beals/.

People, Communication, Thinking, Help

“Our character is our will; for what we will we are.”

Henry Edward Manning (1808–1892) English Roman Catholic archbishop and cardinal

Source: Towards Evening (1889), p. 136.

Faith

“Up to here, in general, we have mainly stuffed the brain of the young people with a indigestible multitude of varios notions, without thinking about enough of the prime necessity to form their character.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 58.

People, Thinking

“THE MOMENT OF CHOICE
A moment of choice is a moment of truth. It's the testing point of our character and competence.”

Stephen R. Covey book First Things First

Source: First Things First (1994), p. 169

Truth

“It is a curious truth — and yet a truth forced upon us by daily observation — that it is not the women who have suffered most who are the unhappy women. A state of permanent unhappiness — not the morbid, half-cherished melancholy of youth, which generally wears off with wiser years, but that settled, incurable discontent and dissatisfaction with all things and all people, which we see in some women, is, with very rare exceptions, at once the index and the exponent of a thoroughly selfish character.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10

Women, People, Truth, Youth

“From the time of the North Briton of the unprincipled Wilkes, a notion has been entertained that the moral spine in Scotland is more flexible than in England. The truth however is, that an elementary difference exists in the public feelings of the two nations quite as great as in the idioms of their respective dialects. The English are a justice-loving people, according to charter and statute; the Scotch are a wrong-resenting race, according to right and feeling: and the character of liberty among them takes its aspect from that peculiarity.”

John Galt (novelist) (1779–1839) British writer

Ringan Gilhaize (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1823) vol. 3, p. 313.

Love, People, Truth, Justice

“I've also grown as an actor as I've got older in life. I've learnt how to go to work, immerse myself 100 per cent in the character and, at the end of the day, take it all off and go back, get a nice bubble bath, have a nice massage and realise that is not my life. And that feels good.”

Halle Berry (1966) American actress

Steve Pratt (March 27, 2004) "Blazing a trail with Halle's comet", The Northern Echo, p. 10.

Life, Feeling

“The only satisfactory manifestations of religious character and life are associated with the reciprocal influences of spiritual experience and aggressive activity.”

John McClellan Holmes (1834–1911) US Christian minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 112.

Life

“There is usually no ressentiment just where a superficial view would look for it first: in the criminal. The criminal is essentially an active type. Instead of repressing hatred, revenge, envy, and greed, he releases them in crime. Ressentiment is a basic impulse only in the crimes of spite. These are crimes which require only a minimum of action and risk and from which the criminal draws no advantage, since they are inspired by nothing but the desire to do harm. The arsonist is the purest type in point, provided that he is not motivated by the pathological urge of watching fire (a rare case) or by the wish to collect insurance. Criminals of this type strangely resemble each other. Usually they are quiet, taciturn, shy, quite settled and hostile to all alcoholic or other excesses. Their criminal act is nearly always a sudden outburst of impulses of revenge or envy which have been repressed for years. A typical cause would be the continual deflation of one's ego by the constant sight of the neighbor's rich and beautiful farm. Certain expressions of class ressentiment, which have lately been on the increase, also fall under this heading. I mention a crime committed near Berlin in 1912: in the darkness, the criminal stretched a wire between two trees across the road, so that the heads of passing automobilists would be shorn off. This is a typical case of ressentiment, for any car driver or passenger at all could be the victim, and there is no interested motive. Also in cases of slander and defamation of character, ressentiment often plays a major role...”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Hostility, Alcohol, Beauty, Cars

“The vulgar opinion, then, which, on health reasons, condemns vegetable food and so much praises animal food, being so ill-founded, I have always thought it well to oppose myself to it, moved both by experience and by that refined knowledge of natural things which some study and conversation with great men have given me. And perceiving now that such my constancy has been honoured by some learned and wise physicians with their authoritative adhesion, I have thought it my duty publicly to diffuse the reasons of the Pythagorean diet, regarded as useful in medicine, and, at the same time, as full of innocence, of temperance, and of health. And it is none the less accompanied with a certain delicate pleasure, and also with a refined and splendid luxury, if care and skill be applied in selection and proper supply of the best vegetable food, to which the fertility and the natural character of our beautiful country seem to invite us.”

Antonio Cocchi (1695–1758) Italian physician and naturalist

The Pythagorean Diet: for the Use of the Medical Faculty

Men, Health, Pleasure, Food

“I see no faults in the Church, and therefore let me be resurrected with the Saints, whether I ascend to heaven or descend to hell, or go to any other place. And if we go to hell, we will turn the devils out of doors and make a heaven of it. Where this people are, there is good society. What do we care where we are, if the society be good? I don't care what a man's character is; if he's my friend—a true friend, I will be a friend to him, and preach the Gospel of salvation to him, and give him good counsel, helping him out of his difficulties.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 5:517 (23 July 1843)
1840s

People, Hell, Help

“Let me tell you about what we call our field trips. It may surprise you to know, that I have personally visited, with many of my associates, practically every city in the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to Mexico. If any of you has done this, you realize what big a country it is. It has taken me weeks and weeks of the hardest kind of work and continual travel to accomplish this. I which that my duties were such that I could do more of it; and I am trying to arrange my affairs so that I can. On these trips I visit from five to ten dealers a day. I meet them in their own places of business, talk with them across their own desks and solicit from them suggestions and criticisms as to their relations with the Corporation; the character of the product; the Corporation's policies; the trend of consumer demand; their viewpoint as to the future, and many other things that such contact makes possible. I solicit criticism of anything and everything.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 343

Travel, Business, Future, Personality

“There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

On marionettes, as quoted in The New York Times (15 February 1987)

Love, Soul

“A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe…. What a terrible future!”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (October 18, 1888)
Letters

Life, People, Beauty, Star

“The idea of the elite as composed of men and women having a finer moral character is an ideology of the elite.”

C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite

Source: The Power Elite (1956), p. 14.

Women, Men, Idea

“Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, [but] every character is an extension of the author's own personality.”

Edward Albee (1928–2016) American playwright

The New York Times (18 September 1966)

People, Personality

“Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul, that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love, and this may be found in the humblest condition of life.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Love, Life, Soul

“Ethics increases the range of what it is about ourselves that we can will—extending it from our actions to the motives and character traits and dispositions from which they arise. We want to be able to will the sources of our actions down to the very bottom.”

Thomas Nagel (1937) American philosopher

Source: The View From Nowhere (1986), p. 135.

Motivation

“It must, however, be admitted, that the hard circumstances form the strong character, as the cold climes of the north nurture a race of men, whose activity and energies leave those of the south far behind. Hence it is that the characters of women are more uniform than men; they are rarely placed in circumstances to call forth the latent powers of the mind.”

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

Literary Remains

Women, Men, Strong

“Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

“Marching through a Novel” in Tossing and Turning (1977)

“Look at the men themselves who lead in this cause. Is there one among them with whom you would trust yourself in the dark? Can you have, I will not say, any confidence in their opinions and principles, but any doubt of the wickedness of their intentions? Look at them, at their characters, at their conduct. What is there more base, and more detestable, more at variance with all tact and decency, as well as all morality, truth, and honour? A cause so supported cannot be a good cause. They may use Burdett as an instrument for a time, and you also if you place yourself in their trammels, but depend upon it, if a convulsion follows their attempt to work upon the minds of the people, inflamed as they now are by distress, for which your reform will afford a very inadequate remedy, I shall not precede you many months on the scaffold, which you will have assisted in preparing for us both.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Letter to General Sir Robert Thomas Wilson (October 1819) on the Radicals, quoted in M. R. Brock, Lord Liverpool and Liberal Toryism. 1820-1827 (Cambridge University Press, 1941), pp. 117-118.
1810s

Men, People, Truth, Confidence

“The core idea was to be as realistic as possible and we wanted people to identify with the characters.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[Edinburgh International Film Festival, www.edfilmfest.org.uk, http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/news/2008/06/self-portrait-olly-blackburn, Olly Blackburn, News - Self portrait: Olly Blackburn, 20 June 2008, 23 February 2012]

People, Idea

“The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.”

George Boardman the Younger (1828–1903) American theologian

Reported in Phinneys' Calendar (1878), edited by Andrew Beers.

Law

“Now that I was able to play World of Warcraft at my mother’s house with no limitations, aside from school and homework, I became very addicted to the game and my character in it. It was all I cared about.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Pastimes

World, School, Game, Housing

“India has a medieval and authoritarian structure of society and the tradition of science is not yet strong. The power of government officials is increasing as an inescapable result of the pervasive anthoritarian character of lndian society.”

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972) Indian scientist

Quote, Professor P.C. Mahalanobis and the Development of Population Statistics in lndia

Strong, Science

“Infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts.”

J. L. Austin (1911–1960) English philosopher

Austin (1975, p. 18–19) as cited in: James Loxley (2006) Performativity. p. 81.

“Instead of opposing comic and tragic characters [as Molière and Shakespeare] and contrary scenic states, I organize the opposition of contrasting values, lines, and curves. I oppose curves to straight lines, flat surfaces to molded forms, pure local colors to nuances of gray. These initial plastic forms are either superimposed on objective elements or not, it makes no difference to me. There is only a question of variety.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote from 'Notes on Contemporary Plastic Life', 'Kunstblatt', Berlin 1923; as quoted in The documents of 20th century art – Functions of Painting by Fernand Léger, in Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1973, p. 25
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's

Color, Question

“It has been observed here this morning that we are called fanatics. Bless me! That is nothing. Who has not been called a fanatic who has discovered anything new in philosophy or science? We have all read of Galileo the astronomer who, contrary to the system of astronomy that had been received for ages before his day, taught that the sun, and not the earth, was the centre of our planetary system? For this the learned astronomer was called "fanatic," and subjected to persecution and imprisonment of the most rigorous character. So it has been with others who have discovered and explained new truths in science and philosophy which have been in opposition to long-established theories; and the opposition they have encountered has endured until the truth of their discoveries has been demonstrated by time. The term "fanatic" is not applied to professors of religion only…I will tell you who the real fanatics are: they are they who adopt false principles and ideas as facts, and try to establish a superstructure upon a false foundation. They are the fanatics; and however ardent and zealous they may be, they may reason or argue on false premises till doomsday, and the result will be false. If our religion is of this character we want to know it; we would like to find a philosopher who can prove it to us. We are called ignorant; so we are: but what of it? Are not all ignorant? I rather think so. Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon? When we view its face we may see what is termed "the man in the moon," and what some philosophers declare are the shadows of mountains. But these sayings are very vague, and amount to nothing; and when you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the most ignorant of their fellows. So it is with regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain. It was made to give light to those who dwell upon it, and to other planets; and so will this earth when it is celestialized. Every planet in its first rude, organic state receives not the glory of God upon it, but is opaque; but when celestialized, every planet that God brings into existence is a body of light, but not till then. Christ is the light of this planet. God gives light to our eyes.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, 13:271 (July 24, 1870)
1870s

Life, God, Truth, Age

“We do not build speedways, but roads which correspond to the character of the German landscape.”

Fritz Todt (1891–1942) German engineer and senior Nazi figure

Quoted in "Vortrag in der Leipzig-Hochschule am 6.2.1934" in Die Autobahn, 4/1934, p. 125.

“As for the White House, all the boy's family had lived there, and, barring the eight years of Andrew Jackson's reign, had been more or less at home there ever since it was built. The boy half thought he owned it, and took for granted that he should some day live in it. He felt no sensation whatever before Presidents. A President was a matter of course in every respectable family; he had two in his own; three, if he counted old Nathaniel Gorham, who, was the oldest and first in distinction. Revolutionary patriots, or perhaps a Colonial Governor, might be worth talking about, but any one could be President, and some very shady characters were likely to be. Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, and such things were swarming in every street.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Family, Home, Boy, Housing

“The last decades of scientific development have led us to the recognition of a new universal law of all natural phenomena, which, from its extraordinarily extended range, and from the connection which it constitutes between natural phenomena of all kinds, even of the remotest times and the most distant places, is especially fitted to give us an idea of what I have described as the character of the natural sciences, which I have chosen as the subject of this lecture.”

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) physicist and physiologist

"On the Conservation of Force" (1862), p. 279
Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects (1881)

Law, Idea, Nature, Universe

“A theory of haptics is expounded which the author feels will establish "a foundation for the Haptics of form and the psychology of the blind." He differentiates between "Haptics of an essentially optical character" and "pure or autonomous Haptics" such as is experienced by those blind from early childhood. The weaknesses of certain psychological theories such as Gestalt, are discussed in terms of Révész's haptic theory. Part II of the book analyzes the aesthetics of haptic form and the art of the blind. The work of blind sculptors is presented and is analyzed.”

Géza Révész (1878–1955) Hungarian psychologist and musicologist

Géza Révész (1950)., Psychology and art of the blind. Oxford, England: Longmans. Abstract.

Books, Art, Feeling, Parting

“To see the British Prime Minister watching the company, with six or seven senses not available to ordinary men, judging character, motive, and subconscious impulse, perceiving what each was thinking and even what each was going to say next, and compounding with telepathic instinct the argument or appeal best suited to the vanity, weakness, or self-interest of his immediate auditor, was to realize that the poor President would be playing blind man's bluff in that party.”

John Maynard Keynes book The Economic Consequences of the Peace

On David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson, in Chapter III, p. 41
The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

Men, Motivation, Thinking, Sense

“[I]nfatuation with characters still pervades American classrooms and holds back essential improvement in instruction.”

John DeFrancis (1911–2009) American linguist

"The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform" (2006, p. 25) http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp171_chinese_writing_reform.pdf "The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform" (2006)