Quotes about character (2978 quotes, page 20)

“And so in City after City, street-barricades are piled, and truculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins; populace after populace rises, King after King capitulates or absconds; and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive, much higher, more irresistible and less resisted than ever before; testifying too sadly on what a bottomless volcano, or universal powder-mine of most inflammable mutinous chaotic elements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, Society with all its arrangements and acquirements everywhere, in the present epoch, rests! The kind of persons who excite or give signal to such revolutions—students, young men of letters, advocates, editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes, acting everywhere on the discontent of the millions and blowing it into flame,—might give rise to reflections as to the character of our epoch. Never till now did young men, and almost children, take such a command in human affairs.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)

Men , Children , Democracy , Universe

“A mellow understanding of life and of human nature is, and always has been, the Chinese ideal of character, and from that understanding other qualities are derived, such as pacifism, contentment, calm and strength of endurance which distinguish the Chinese character.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

Source: My Country and My People (1935), p. 43

Life , Understanding , Nature

“I prefer character-driven stuff. I am an actor and I come from theater and I love creating a scene and working with actors as opposed as opposed to working with CGI. But there is some fun to be had with the B-movie monster movies as well especially today because they are so self-aware, you can have a lot of fun. But I definitely prefer the more straightforward horror.”

Griff Furst (1981) American actor, director and musician

SLIFF 2016 Interview: Griff Furst – Director of COLD MOON http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/2016/10/slif-2016-interview-cold-moon-director-griff-furst/ (October 31, 2016)

Love

“The tug-of-war between Scientologists and anti-Scientologists over Hubbard’s legacy has created two swollen archetypes: the most important person who ever lived and the world’s greatest con man. Hubbard was certainly grandiose, but to label him merely a fraud is to ignore the complexity of his character.”

Lawrence Wright (1947) American writer

[Wright, Lawrence, February 14, 2011, The Apostate, Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology, The New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright?currentPage=all]

War , World , Fraud , Personality

“Take myself as a good-will ambassador. I'm great — I'm taking myself as a character — for the intellectuals and the man on the street. I'm great where Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. leaves off. I'm not so good with high society, in either North or South America, because I'm highly unconventional. Perhaps I bewilder people by being at once the esthete, the intellectual and the vulgarian.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Quoted by Chan Norris, "Orson Welles on Latin America". PM, September 13, 1942, page 17.

People

“One can acquire everything in solitude — except character.”

Stendhal (1783–1842) French writer

On peut tout acquérir dans la solitude, hormis du caractère.
Fragments
De L'Amour (On Love) (1822)

Solitude

“There are epic impulses everywhere you look in There Will Be Blood; what's missing is character development, focused storytelling and, most significantly (apart from that terrific opening sequence), any sense of raw, intuitive drama.”

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/12/26/blood/ of There Will Be Blood (2007)

Sense

“Whereas the conception of space and time as a four-dimensional manifold has been very fruitful for mathematical physicists, its effect in the field of epistemology has been only to confuse the issue. Calling time the fourth dimension gives it an air of mystery. One might think that time can now be conceived as a kind of space and try in vain to add visually a fourth dimension to the three dimensions of space. It is essential to guard against such a misunderstanding of mathematical concepts. If we add time to space as a fourth dimension it does not lose any of its peculiar character as time. …Musical tones can be ordered according to volume and pitch and are thus brought into a two dimensional manifold. Similarly colors can be determined by the three basic colors red, green and blue… Such an ordering does not change either tones or colors; it is merely a mathematical expression of something that we have known and visualized for a long time. Our schematization of time as a fourth dimension therefore does not imply any changes in the conception of time. …the space of visualization is only one of many possible forms that add content to the conceptual frame. We would therefore not call the representation of the tone manifold by a plane the visual representation of the two dimensional tone manifold.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Music , Color , Mathematics , Thinking

“The character and conquest of the invincible champion are ever the same. A Lacedaemonian died while writing with his own blood on a rock — " Sparta has conquered!" But, O, there is an illustration higher and better than any derived from mere earthly annals. Jesus veiled His glory in the skies; shrouded divinity in mortality, and with godhead and humanity coalesced in His person, entered the lists with more than mortal strife against the powers of hell. He drank the bitter cup with sublimer resignation than the sages of earth ever knew; contended victoriously where finite champions must inevitably have been destroyed; fell, like the strong man, destroying His foes by His death; persevered on our behalf in all the fearful descent from the august throne of the Eternal to the stony floor of the cold and gloomy sepulchre; that Hope's sweet fountain might gush up for mankind in Golgotha, and Salvation plant her banner with immortal triumph at the portal of the conquered tomb.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 451.

Death , Fear , Hope , Hell

“I've seen how other writers have approached the relationships in the Arthurian cycle in this century, and it does seem to me that while some of the characters get treated fairly, others do not. And the point is, it's one of those kinds of legends in which no one is totally wrong, not even Modred. It presents a collision of necessities, and Modred has his own political reality.”

C. J. Cherryh (1942) United States science fiction and fantasy author

The Camelot Project interview (1996)

Reality

“Faith is not a virtue, but a character flaw.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ faith https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/jesus-n-mo-n-faith-3/" September 14, 2016

Faith

“A breakdown of management into its basic functions — development, production and marketing — revealed that the character of the functions, their chronological sequence, the closeness with which they had to be integrated and their relative importance to the success and survival of the business, all depended upon the system of techniques in the firm concerned.”

Joan Woodward (1916–1971) British sociologist

Source: Management and technology, Problems of Progress Industry, 1958, p. 21-22

Business , Success , Dependency

“It is an exciting and dangerous time, for this generation of Americans has the opportunity so rarely granted to others by fate and history. We literally have the chance to shape the future - to put our own stamp on the face and character of America, to bend history just a little bit.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

On the national debate, Speech http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/10/us/biden-joins-campaign-for-the-presidency.html announcing entry into 1988 presidential race, Wilmington, Delaware (June 10, 1987)
1980s

Fate , History , Chance , Time

“Kit chuckled. “You, Bull Morgan, are a wicked judge of human character.”
“Hell, Kit, thought you’d figured it out by now: all human character is wicked. Just varies in degree is all.””

Robert Lynn Asprin (1946–2008) American science fiction and fantasy author

Source: Wagers of Sin (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 313)

Hell

“In the lives of nations some occasions possess a unique character. Surely this, the opening of the Independent Fiji's first Parliament, is one of them.”

Robert Sidney Foster (1913–2005) British Colonial governor

Address opening Fiji's first parliamentary session as an independent nation (excerpts)

“I tweet, therefore my entire life has shrunk to 140 character chunks of instant event and predigested gnomic wisdom. And swearing.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Neil Gaiman's Twitter stream http://twitter.com/neilhimself, Tweet ID # 1178514410, (5 February 2009) http://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1178514410

Life , Wisdom

“How should one approach the person of van Gogh in order to be able to build a statue of him? How can one place him outside of himself, separate him from the tragic character of his life? How can one build a statue in the open air which simultaneously evokes the rare and the new person who was van Gogh, as also the enormity of the new aspect of the current and future art of painting?”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Quote in: 'Le Maillet et le Ciseau', (early 1956); as quoted in Zadkine and Van Gogh, ed. Garance Schabert and Ron Dirven (transl. Anne Porcelijn), Vincent van Goghhuis, Zundert & Scriptum Art, Schiedam 2008, p.29
1940 - 1960

Life , Art , Future , Painting

“I'm struggling with flowering trees [in Spring 1881, shortly after his Algeria trip] and with women and children. I keep feeling regretful, all the same – I think of all the trouble I have given you for nothing, and I wonder how long you will put up with my womanish whims; and through all I keep seeing those pretty English girls [Duret invited him to visit England]. What a misfortune, always to be so undecided! But it's at the root of my character, and I'm too old to change.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, pp. 156-157 : a letter to Théodore Duret, March 1881

Women , Children , Feeling , Girl

“I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character — his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.”

Henry David Thoreau book A Plea for Captain John Brown

A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)

Life , Angels , Light , Christ

“The Reward due to so great and Distinguished a Character. The Subscribers beg leave to Report to your Honorable. House (Which We do in justice to the Character of so Brave a man) that under Our Own observation, we declare that A Negro Man Called Salem Poor of Col. Fryes Regiment, Capt. Ames. Company in the late Battle of Charleston, behaved like an Experienced Officer, as Well as an Excellent Soldier, to Set forth Particulars of his Conduct would be Tedious, We Would Only beg leave to say in the Person of this Negro Centers a Brave & gallant Soldier.”

William Prescott (1726–1795) Continental army soldier

Citation http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/salem-poor-original-patriot of Salem Poor

Justice , Housing , Personality

“When my brother… was a young boy learning the Chinese classics, I was in the habit of listening with him and I became unusually proficient at understanding those passages that he found too difficult to grasp and memorize. Father, a most learned man, was always regretting the fact: "Just my luck!" he would say. "What a pity she was not born a man!" But then I gradually realized that people were saying "It's bad enough when a man flaunts his Chinese learning; she will come to no good," and since then I have avoided writing the simplest [Chinese] character. My handwriting is appalling.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

People , Boy , Understanding , Learning

“If you take care of your character, your reputation will take care of itself.”

Alan Sugar (1947) British business magnate, media personality, and political advisor

From, The Apprentice, BBC television, 3rd June 2009 ( taken from “If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself.” ― D.L. Moodysee http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5083573.D_L_Moody ).

“[…] and you, my compatriots in Norway, have no grounds for complaining that we have forgotten the dear, familiar and specific character with which God has endowed our land and our nation. That is so firmly entrenched in our being that it finds expression, whether we like it or not. Do not, therefore, insult us further with such [an accusation]; it hurts our feelings, and thereby proves how unfounded it is, for otherwise it would be easy to treat it with indifference.”

Hans Gude (1825–1903) Norwegian painter

Reported in Frode Haverkamp. Hans Fredrik Gude: From National Romanticism to Realism in Landscape, trans. Joan Fuglesang (in Norwegian).
Attributed

God , Feeling , Hurt , Indifference

“Some Englishmen, of whom Kitchener was chief, believed that a rebellion of Arabs against Turks would enable England, while fighting Germany, simultaneously to defeat Turkey. Their knowledge of the nature and power and country of the Arabic-speaking peoples made them think that the issue of such a rebellion would be happy: and indicated its character and method. So they allowed it to begin…”

T. E. Lawrence book Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Introduction: Foundations of Revolt
Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

People , Nature , Knowledge , Thinking

“Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within the hearsay of little children tends towards the formation of character.”

Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) American Universalist minister (1771–1852)

Manuscript, Sermons; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 216.

Children , Education

“To the Carpenter, with his splendid worldliness, the premier qualification for character was self-respect, and the alertness and mastery of environment which go with self-respect. But to Paul the primate virtue is submissiveness—"the powers that be!" He sought to cure the seditiousness of the working class by drawing off their gaze to a crown of righteousness reserved in heaven for them—a gaseous felicity beyond the stars.”

Bouck White (1874–1951) American author and novelist

Source: The Call of the Carpenter (1914), p. 237

Star , Drawing

“Yeah, the physical stuff is always fun. I'm a physical and active person, so I would have loved to have done more of this, but my character does a lot more in the other films.”

Liam Hemsworth (1990) Australian actor

Commenting on decreased physical role of his character from book The Hunger Games as changed for adaptation to film. — — [Davia L. Mosley, 'The Hunger Games' exclusive Cast members share highlights, behind-the-scenes action, Marietta Daily Journal, Georgia, United States, March 13, 2012]

Love , Personality

“The concepts of time and space reflect the significance of media to civilization. Media that emphasize time are those that are durable in character, such as parchment, clay, and stone. The heavy materials are suited to the development of architecture and sculpture. Media that emphasize space are apt to be less durable and light in character, such as papyrus and paper. The latter are suited to wide areas in administration and trade. The conquest of Egypt by Rome gave access to supplies of papyrus which became the basis of a large administration empire.”

Harold Innis book Empire and Communications

2007 edition, pp.26-27.
Empire and Communications (1950)

Light , Time

“The mark of the Christian is, simply, that he is a matured and freed human being. The direct political implication of this risen character of the Christian is that … the Christian is an incessant revolutionary. He is always, everywhere in revolt—not for himself but for humanity.”

William Stringfellow (1928–1985) American theologian

Source: William Stringfellow: Essential Writings (2013), "Jesus the Criminal" (1969), p. 64

“I like to play any character that allows me the freedom to explore it and teach the audience something they didn't know, and show them a journey they identify with … or be inspired, or moved. Anything that touches someone's heart is important for me.”

Alicia Witt (1975) American actress

Filmcritic.com interview (2000)

Freedom , Heart

“Many people, no doubt, honestly believe that they are only giving away the interests of Czechoslovakia, whereas I fear we shall find that we have deeply compromised, and perhaps fatally endangered, the safety and even the independence of Great Britain and France. … You have to consider the character of the Nazi movement and the rule which it implies. The Prime Minister desires to see cordial relations between this country and Germany. There is no difficulty at all in having cordial relations with the German people. Our hearts go out to them. But they have no power. You must have diplomatic and correct relations, but there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi Power, that Power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force. That Power cannot ever be the trusted friend of the British democracy.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government#column_370 in the House of Commons (5 October 1938) against the Munich Agreement
The 1930s

Friendship , People , Pleasure , Fear

“The efforts of a multitude of writers have rather been directed towards producing alternatives for Euclid which shall be more suitable, that is to say, easier, for schoolboys. It is of course not surprising that, in these days of short cuts, there should have arisen a movement to get rid of Euclid and to substitute "a royal road to geometry"; the marvel is that a book which was not written for schoolboys but for grown men (as all internal evidence shows, and in particular the essentially theoretical character of the work and its aloofness from anything of the nature of "practical" geometry) should have held its own as a schoolbook for so long.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (1908)

Men , Books , Nature , Effort

“From my experience dealing with Sichuan [after the 2008 earthquake] I started to understand very clearly the character of local government. They will do anything. You will never really wrongly accuse them of anything because they do everything.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Branigan, Tania. “ Accounts Invaded, Computers Infected—Human Rights Activists Tell of Cyber Attacks http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/14/china-human-rights-activists-cyber-attack.” Guardian, January 14, 2010.
2010-, 2010

Understanding

“The sixth edition [of the Moral Sentiments] includes a whole new part, on the character of virtue, and some drastic revision elsewhere. My co-editor of the work, the late Professor A. L. Macfie, was apt to say in consequence that the sixth edition is a different book. That is an exaggeration, but the sixth edition is certainly a much altered book.”

D. D. Raphael (1916–2015) Philosopher

The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy (2007), Ch. 1: Two Versions

Books , Parting

“On why our features sag, It is by the natural and unaffected movements of the muscles, caused by the passions of the mind, that every man's character would in some measure be written in his face, by the time he arrives at forty years of age.”

William Hogarth book The Analysis of Beauty

The Analysis of Beauty (1753)

Age , Nature , Passion , Time

“She was tall beyond the ordinary height of woman, but stately in her grace as the ideal of a queen and the reality of a swan. Her arms and feet were bare, but for the gems which encircled them. A white robe swept around her in folds gathered at the waist by a golden girdle inscribed with signs and characters. Her hair was singularly thick, and of that purple blackness seen on the grape and the neck of the raven — black, with a sort of azure bloom upon it. It was fastened in large folds, which went several times round the head, and these were adorned with jewels and precious stones, like a midnight lighted with stars. Her complexion was a pale pure olive, perfectly colourless, but delicate as that of a child. Her mouth was the only spot where the rose held dominion, and lips of richer crimson never opened to the morning.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Star , Reality , Light , Time

“I wanted to do a show about a character that was an innocent, and so I focused on a sea sponge because it's a funny animal, a strange one, I thought he was a funny, nerdy, squeaky-clean square.”

Stephen Hillenburg (1961–2018) American marine biologist, cartoonist, animator, storyboard artist, director, producer, and writer

Animals , Sea

“[I]f you have in your hearts to say…”we will not, therefore, be polygamists lest we should fail in obtaining some earthly honor, character and office, etc,"-the man that has that in his heart, and will continue to persist in pursuing that policy, will come short of dwelling in the presence of the Father and the Son, in celestial glory. The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy. Others attain unto a glory and may even be permitted to come into the presence of the Father and the Son; but they cannot reign as kings in glory, because they had blessing offered unto them, and they refused to accept them. The Lord gave a revelation through Joseph Smith, His servant; and we have believed and practiced it.”

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

Journal of Discourses 11:269 (Aug. 19, 1866)
1860s

Men , God , Heart

“When, however, not more than half that duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of light broke in upon my gloom. I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel's "Mémoires," and came to the passage which relates his father's death, the distressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be everything to them-would supply the place of all that they had lost. A vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over me, and I was moved to tears. From this moment my been grew lighter. The oppression of the thought that all feeling was dead within me, was gone. I was no longer hopeless: I was not a stock or a stone. I had still, it seemed, some of the material out of which all worth of character, and all capacity for happiness, are made.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/140/mode/1up pp. 140-141

Boy , Reading , Happiness , Dead

“Invariably will you find perseverance exemplified as the radical principle in every truly great character. It facilitates, perfects, and consolidates the execution of the plan conceived, and renders profitable its results when attained. By continuing to advance steadily in the same way, light constantly increases, obstacles disappear, efficient habits are confirmed, experience is acquired, the use of the best means is reduced to easy action, and success becomes more sure.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 450.

Way , Light , Success , Perfection

“He wrote with great care, and with a sharpness, vivacity, and variety of epithet that give immediate and continuing pleasure, but he was not in any serious sense a novelist or even a writer of fiction. His emotionally injured self is the sole character of his fictions, with everybody else seen through the haze of his paranoia, like figures in a fun-fair mirror.”

Frederick Rolfe (1860–1913) British writer, photographer and historian

Julian Symons, in the Times Literary Supplement, January 3, 1975.
Criticism

Pleasure , Sense

“The proletariat thus shared its dictatorship with nobody. As to the question of the "majority", this never troubled Lenin much. In an article "Constitutional Illusions" (Aug. 1917; Works, vol. 25, p. 201) he wrote: "in time of revolution it is not enough to ascertain the ‘ will of the majority’ – you must prove to be stronger at the decisive moment and at the decisive place; you must win … We have seen innumerable examples of the better organized, more politically conscious and better armed minority forcing its will upon the majority and defeating it." (pg. 503) Trotsky, however, answers questions [in The Defence of Terrorism] that Lenin evaded or ignored. "Where is your guarantee, certain wise men ask us, that it is just your party that expresses the interests of historical development? Destroying or driving underground the other parties, you have thereby prevented their political competition with you, and consequently you have deprived yourselves of the possibility of testing your line of action." Trotsky replies: "This idea is dictated by a purely liberal conception of the course of the revolution. In a period in which all antagonisms assume an open character; and the political struggle swiftly passes into a civil war, the ruling party has sufficient material standard by which to test its line of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers. Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the Mensheviks and the S. R. s [Socialist Republics] … and they have disappeared. This criterion is sufficient for us" (p. 101). This is one of the most enlightening theoretical formulations of Bolshevism, from which it appears that the "rightness" of a historical movement or a state is to be judged by whether its use of violence is successful. Noske did not succeed in crushing the German Communists, but Hitler did; it would thus follow from Trotsky’ s rule that Hitler "expressed the interests of historical development". Stalin liquidated the Trotskyists in Russia, and they disappeared – so evidently Stalin, and not Trotsky, stood for historical progress.”

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

pg. 510
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age

Men , War , Idea , Question

“The dominant feature in his character was his devotion to the pursuit of truth”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

A. Wolf, from the introduction to Spinoza's Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being (1910)
S - Z

Truth

“People think of him [Caligula] as a revolutionary or a figure of fun or a madman. There are so many aspects to him that we know really little about him, just the information that was given to us through a historian, a Roman historian called Suetonius, and he was from the other side of the family, so Suetonius paints Caligula as a very wicked madman, and that's the only reason that Suetonius considers why he did so many, on the face of it, crazy things. My interpretation of the character is not quite like that.”

Malcolm McDowell (1943) English actor

As quoted in A Documentary on the Making of Gore Vidal's Caligula [documentary] (1981), Cinemedia West Corporation

People , Family , Thinking , Painting

“Mindfulness in fact has, if we may personify it, a rather unassuming character. Compared with it, mental factors such as devotion, energy, imagination and intelligence are certainly more colourful personalities, making an immediate and strong impact on people and situations. Their conquests are sometimes rapid and vast, though often insecure. Mindfulness, on the other hand, is of an unobtrusive nature. Its virtues shine inwardly, and in ordinary life most of its merits are passed on to other mental faculties which generally receive all the credit.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

Source: The Vision of Dhamma (1994), p. 71

Life , People , Imagination , Intelligence

“Hearing him speak is so fun, reassuring I dare say. You can say all you like about Sihanouk: that he's an atrocious liar, a madman, a fraud, a swashbuckler, an international blot. You may think that, but you cannot deny how in this age in which the political arena seems to generate only dull, obtuse and boring characters with no imagination, he's a kind of miracle.”

Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) Italian writer

On Norodom Sihanouk, (June 1973), as quoted in Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011) p. 100
Intervista con la Storia

Age , Imagination , Fraud , Thinking

“Almost all new French art [ French Impressionism ] has for me a flat, empty character without any distance and depth in colors. The paintings look like white sheets of paper with colors on it.”

Jacob Maris (1837–1899) Dutch painter

Bijna alle nieuwe Fransche kunst [Impressionisme] heeft voor mij een plat, leeg karakter zonder afstand en diepte in kleur. De schilderijen lijken witte velletjes papier met kleurtjes erop.
Quote of Jacob Maris, in: 'Veerpont - Jacob Maris', Frank van der Velden https://www.rembrandtcirkel.nl/ul/cms/attachment/file/document/6/0/7/607/607/1/veerpont.pdf; Vereniging Rembrandt, Spring 2005, p. 24
he lived for several years in Paris, till 1871

Art , Color , Painting

“The man of frank and strong prejudices, far from being a political and social menace and an obstacle in the path of progress, is often a benign character and helpful citizen. The chance is far greater, furthermore, that he will be more creative than the man who can never come to more than a few gingerly held conclusions, or who thinks that all ideas should be received with equal hospitality. There is such a thing as being so broad you are flat.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Life without prejudice,” p. 11-12.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

Idea , Thinking , Strong , Chance

“…it is widely but wrongly believed that Beavis and Butt-Head celebrates its characters, and applauds their sublime lack of values, taste and intelligence. I've never thought so. I believe Mike Judge would rather die than share a taxi ride to the airport with his characters — that for him, B&B function like Dilbert's co-workers in the Scott Adams universe. They are a target for his anger against the rising tide of stupidity.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/beavis-and-butt-head-do-america-1996 of Beavis and Butthead Do America (20 December 1996)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Stupidity , Intelligence , Universe , Anger

“I am late with the new Doris Lessing [The Golden Notebook]. I make no apology: it has taken me a long time to read (568 pages of close print) and at the end of it all I feel cheated. This talented writer has attempted an experiment which has failed, essayed a scale which is beyond her…. This is a book of revolt – political, social, sexual. Anna [the heroine] became a Communist in South Africa, seeing in Communism a "moral energy" not to be found in other creeds or in the long-entrenched privileged class. Anna is also concerned with being a "free woman" – rebelling against traditional male dominance – and with achieving maximal erotic fulfilment…. There is no doubt about the great moral virtues here – intelligence, honesty, integrity – but it is the aesthetic virtues that seem to be lacking. The characters do not really interest us: when we have dialogue it is strangely unnatural … Mrs Lessing’s old singleness of vision, her strength as a writer, is not to be found here. [Review in the English provincial newspaper the Yorkshire Post, 1962]”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

People, Joseph Conrad, Doris Lessing

Books , Feeling , Intelligence , Communication

“There is no attachment stronger, more unselfish, than the love between brother and sister, thrown on the world orphans at an early age, with none to love them save each other. They feel how much they stand alone, and this draws them more together. Constant intercourse has given that perfect understanding which only familiarity can do; hopes, interests, sorrows, are alike in common. Each is to either a source of pride; it is the tenderness of love without its fears, and the confidence of marriage, without its graver and more anxious character. The fresh impulses of youth are all warm about the heart.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Love , Marriage , Youth , Age

“The fundamental principle of the atheism of Spinoza is the doctrine of the simplicity of the universe, and the unity of that substance, in which he supposes both thought and matter to inhere. There is only one substance, says he, in the world; and that substance is perfectly simple and indivisible, and exists every where, without any local presence. Whatever we discover externally by sensation; whatever we feel internally by reflection; all these are nothing but modifications of that one, simple, and necessarily existent being, and are not possest of any separate or distinct existence. Every passion of the soul; every configuration of matter, however different and various, inhere in the same substance, and preserve in themselves their characters of distinction, without communicating them to that subject, in which they inhere.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
G - L

World , Feeling , Soul , Communication

“There's an old saying that states something about leaving the best for last. [Writer/producer] George Lucas certainly didn't follow that adage when crafting the original Star Wars trilogy. Return of the Jedi, the final installment of the series, is easily the least innovative and most hokey of the three films. In fact, most of the enjoyment derived from this motion picture comes from the simple act of getting together with old friends and enemies one more time. If Luke, Han, Leia, and Vader were replaced by nameless, faceless characters, Return of the Jedi wouldn't be a whole lot more interesting than Independence Day.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/s/sw3.html of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983).
Three star reviews

War , Star , Time

“A spear carrier is somebody who stands in the hall when Caesar passes, comes to attention and thumps his spear. A spear carrier is the anonymous character cut down by the hero as he advances to save the menaced heroine. A spear carrier is a character put in a story to be used like a piece of disposable tissue. In a story, spear carriers never suddenly assert themselves by throwing their spears aside and saying, “I resign. I don’t want to be used.“ They are there to be used, either for atmosphere or as minor obstacles in the path of the hero. The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers. We take no joy in being used and discarded. I was finding then, that wet, chilly, unhappy night, that I took no joy in seeing other people used and discarded.””

Alexei Panshin book Rite of Passage

Source: Rite of Passage (1968), Chapter 18 (p. 222).

People , World , Joy , Night

“What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

The Art of Fiction http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html (1884)

“We must enter into the spirit of the character [for making a portrait]: here the challenge is to place this figure in the human space, to work out what he represents in relation to other people, other human personalities; when you've worked this out, you're done. this truth has to stand out in the end result of the portrait.... when this task is complete, and the subject is placed in the realm of the dead that go on living, I hand over my work.”

Marino Marini (1901–1980) Italian sculptor

As quoted by the Marini Marini Museum: http://www.museomarinomarini.it/section.php?page=fondazione

People , Truth , Personality , Dead

“Demanding an “ape-man” is actually just as silly as asking to see a mammal-man, or a half-human, half-vertebrate. How about a half dachshund, half dog? It’s the same thing. One may as well insist on seeing a town half way between Los Angeles and California. Because the problem with bridging the gap between humans and apes is that there is no gap because humans are apes –definitely and definitively. The word, “ape” doesn’t refer to a species, but to a parent category of collective species, and we’re included. This is no arbitrary classification like the creationists use. It was first determined via meticulous physical analysis by Christian scientists a century before Darwin, and has been confirmed in recent years with new revelations in genetics. Furthermore, it is impossible to define all the characters exclusively indicative of every known member of the family of apes without describing our own genera as one among them. Consequently, we can and have proven that humans are apes in exactly the same way that lions are cats, and iguanas are lizards, and whales are mammals. So where is the proof that humans descend from apes? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now!”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"9th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU, Youtube (May 8, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Family , Dogs , Angels , Way

“To be conservative in politics is to take one’s bearings not from the latest bright idea about how to make a better world, but by looking carefully at what the past reveals both about the kind of people we are and the problems that concern us. As we get older, we often become conservative in our habits, in our family practices, and in our recognition of the richness of our civilization, but this evolution of our character into a set of habits in no way blocks adventurousness. The old no less than the young may be found starting new enterprises, sailing around the world, and solving arcane academic questions. But it is in the ordinary business of life that we find our excitement, not in foolish collective dreams of political perfection.”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

Kenneth Minogue " The Elusive Oakeshott: Michael Oakeshott taught conservatism as practical wisdom, not philosophy http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-elusive-oakeshott/" on theamericanconservative.com, October 1, 2009.

Life , People , World , Family

“I'm impressed that they've been able to take a 2D character with a 1D personality and bloat it into a 3D disaster.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Garfield sucks http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=garfield_sucks
The Best Page in the Universe

Personality

“Panini, the ancient grammarian (probably belonged to 5th century or sixth century BC) mentions a character called Vasudeva son of Vasudeva, and also mentions Kaurava and Arjuna which testifies to Vasudeva Krishna, Arjuna and Kauravas being contemporaries. Megasthenes (350-290 BC), a Greek ethnographer and an ambassador of Seleucus I to the court of Chandragupta Maurya mentioned about Herakles in his famous work Indica.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Many scholars have suggested that the deity identified as Herakles was Krishna
Gopal Chowdhary in: The Greatest Farce of History http://books.google.com/books?id=9bOEAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA181, Partridge Publishing, 4 March 2014, p. 183.

“It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character... So much the better if it is painful for you to take even the first step, the more toilsome the work, the stronger you will emerge from it... I repeat, guard against facility.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter to his son Lucien (1894); as quoted in Painting Outside the lines, Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art, David W. Galenson, Harvard University Press, 30 Jun 2009, p. 84
1890's

Pain , Drawing

“A revolution is coming — a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough — But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Speech in the United States Senate (9 May 1966)

Peace , Success

“I think whenever you write something you want people to like it. The best way to do that, usually, is to write what you think is good. That’s basically what everyone tries to do… just to write what they think is good. Part of that is staying true to the characters and the world (which makes it a kids show by it’s design)… and part of that is introducing deeper concepts that we, as writers, are curious about exploring”

Patrick McHale (artist) (1983) writer, storyboard artist, animator, filmmaker

which makes it more interesting for adults
Interview with Pat McHale (Adventure Time, Over the Garden Wall writer) https://crackplot.com/2015/06/13/interview-with-pat-mchale-adventure-time-over-the-garden-wall-writer/ (June 13, 2015)

People , World , Way , Thinking

“A man is the resultant and exponent of all the forces that have been brought to bear upon him, whether before his birth or afterwards. His action at any moment depends solely upon his constitution, and on the intensity and direction of the various agencies to which he is, and has been, subjected. Some of these will counteract each other; but as he is by nature, and as he has been acted on, and is now acted on from without, so will he do, as certainly and regularly as though he were a machine.
We do not generally admit this, because we do not know the whole nature of any one, nor the whole of the forces that act upon him. We see but a part, and being thus unable to generalise human conduct, except very roughly, we deny that it is subject to any fixed laws at all, and ascribe much both of a man’s character and actions to chance, or luck, or fortune; but these are only words whereby we escape the admission of our own ignorance; and a little reflection will teach us that the most daring flight of the imagination or the most subtle exercise of the reason is as much the thing that must arise, and the only thing that can by any possibility arise, at the moment of its arising, as the falling of a dead leaf when the wind shakes it from the tree.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 25

Law , Exercises , Imagination , Birth

“Democracy serves big business. Because of the expensive, competitive character of the multiparty system, democracy requires ample funds. It therefore naturally becomes the servant of the big international Jewish financiers, who enslave her by paying her. In this manner, a nation's fate is placed in the hands of a clique of bankers.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Fate , Democracy , Business , Nature

“I do love Alice in Wonderland though, that's something I think I could do very well. Don't you think we ought to do an A. W.? A. W.'s Alice in Wonderland? Andy Warhol's Alice in Wonderland? A. W. stands for a lot of things, I understand. It, uh, it would make a fantastic film. So I wanted somebody to write the script for it, in a modern sense. I think it would be the most marvelous movie in the world, if it could be done. Don't you think? Really, I don't think they'e done one since they did a Walt Disney one — which isn’t really doing it. In a sense it is, but not in the way it really should be done. What's needed right now is a real scene. I mean not just cartoon characters, but the actual character of people because there's so many fantastic people that you might as well use the people.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Inner and Outer Space (1965), directed by Andy Warhol

Love , People , World , Way

“There is an old-fashioned word for the body of skills that emotional intelligence represents: character.”

Daniel Goleman (1946) American psychologist & journalist

Source: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (1995), p. 285

Intelligence , Fashion

“Out of the beliefs nourished by the agrarian myth there had arisen the notion that the city was a parasitical growth on the country. Bryan spoke for a people raised for generations on the idea that the farmer was a very special creature, blessed by God, and that in a country consisting largely of farmers the voice of the farmer was the voice of democracy and of virtue itself. The agrarian myth encouraged farmers to believe that they were not themselves an organic part of the whole order of business enterprise and speculation that flourished in the city, partaking of its character and sharing in its risks, but rather the innocent pastoral victims of a conspiracy hatched in the distance. The notion of an innocent and victimized populace colors the whole history of agrarian controversy, and indeed the whole history of the populistic mind.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: The Age of Reform: from Bryan to F.D.R. (1955), Chapter I, part I, p. 35

God , People , Color , Democracy

“When my young master's worship comes to town,
From pedagogue and mother just fit free,
The heir and hopes of a great famiiy;
Who with strong beer and beef the country rules,
And ever since the Conquest have been fools;
And now, with careful prospect to maintain
This character, lest crossing of the strain
Should mend the booby breed, his friends provide
A cousin of his own to be his bride…”

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, and peer of the realm

A Letter from Artemisia in Town to Chloe in the Country (1679)

Hope , Fools , Beer , Strong

“I always think twice before reading the biography of a writer I admire. Biographers sometimes latch onto small details, unreliable eyewitness accounts, character traits that appear puzzling or disappointing – all of which is like the crackling sound that messes with radio transmissions, making the music and the voices impossible to hear. It is only by actually reading his books that we gain intimacy with a writer. This is when he is at his best and he is speaking to us in a low voice without any of the static.”

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

From Nobel Lecture (2014)

Books , Music , Disappointment , Thinking

“We might easily pursue these contrasts between bourgeois of the Jansenist school and those of the Jesuit school. One, of upright and rigid character, was himself in the various occupations of daily life; the other had the personality of his state, which would make of him less a moral personality than a socially determined being, subject to rules which it would be improper and unChristian not to observe, the "first duty of probity" always being, as Père Bourdaloue puts it, to "submit to authority." So that while the disciple of the Jesuit Fathers might be a reliable man, who most probably would always remain prudently within the confines of mediocrity, the disciple of the Jansenists might sometimes indulge in eccentricities. He was less reliable; he might take the counsels of perfection literally, and not be so docile. Under a middle-class exterior, he might often conceal a romantic spirit, preserving a predilection for the heroic feats of olden times.”

Bernard Groethuysen (1880–1946) French literary historian, translator and writer

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 163

Life , School , Time , Personality

“In its present state of development psychology must be thought of as a young science. There is only one field in which it is relatively well established and in which it has advanced steadily: this is the psychology of sensation and perception. The scientific character of this field is fully recognized. Its findings are based almost entirely on experimental evidence, and even when its theories are in conflict one feels that as far as method is concerned it stands on relatively firm ground. The situation is different with the psychology of will, of needs, and of personality despite the fact that these fields have always attracted popular interest. As recently as fifteen years ago it was assumed that they, by their very nature, were not amenable to scientific methods. The little experimental work that had been done seemed too artificial and abstract to give an insight into the real processes. It was generally accepted that experimental investigations of these elusive and highly complicated processes were intrinsically impossible, at least in so far as human beings are concerned. Thus in Europe these problems were treated in a half-literary, half-philosophical way, and in America the tendency was to study individual differences by means of tests.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. 3.

Way , Feeling , Nature , Problem

“If we are to give our utmost effort and skill and enthusiasm, we must believe in ourselves, which means believing in our past and in our future, in our parents and in our children, in that particular blend of moral purpose and practical inventiveness which is the American character.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America (1942), p. 234—235; cited in Portraits Of Industry (2004) by Lorie A. Annarella, p. 5

Children , Parent , Effort , Past

“From the kids on the neighborhood Stag Athletic Club baseball team on the Hill. We went to a movie one afternoon, and there was one of those yogi characters in the picture. Coming out of the joint, one of the kids looked at me, started laughing, and said: "Hey, Berra walks just like that yogi in the movie."”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

I've been Yogi ever since.
As quoted in "Yogi Credits Dickey For His Climb" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ykIaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tCMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6640%2C6523488 by Harry Grayson, in The Hendersonville Times-News (Thursday, November 22, 1951), p. 8.

“The concept of ideographic writing is a most seductive notion. There is great appeal in the concept of written symbols conveying their message directly to our minds, thus bypassing the restrictive intermediary of speech. And it seems so plausible. Surely ideas immediately pop into our minds when we see a road sign, a death's head label on a bottle of medicine, a number on a clock. Aren't Chinese characters a sophisticated system of symbols that similarly convey meaning without regard to sound? Aren't they an ideographic system of writing? The answer to these questions is no. Chinese characters are a phonetic, not an ideographic, system of writing… Here I would go further: There never has been, and never can be, such a thing as an ideographic system of writing.”

John DeFrancis book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy

The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984, p. 133) http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html
The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984)

Death , Idea , Question

“Our Lord's miracles were all essential parts of His one consistent life. They were wrought as evidences not only of His power, but of His mercy. They were throughout moral in their character, and spiritual in the ends contemplated by them. They were in fact embodiments of His whole character, exemplars of His whole teaching, emblems of His whole mission.”

James McCosh (1811–1894) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 66.

Life , Parting

“But while at the bottom of the national life the slime was thus constantly accumulating more and more deleteriously and deeply, so much the more smooth and glittering was the surface, overlaid with the varnish of polished manners and universal friendship. All the world interchanged visits; so that in the houses of quality it was necessary to admit the persons presenting themselves every morning for the levee in a certain order fixed by the master or occasionally by the attendant in waiting, and to give audience only to the more notable one by one, while the rest were more summarily admitted partly in groups, partly en masse at the close—a distinction which Gaius Gracchus, in this too paving the way for the new monarchy, is said to have introduced. The interchange of letters of courtesy was carried to as great an extent as the visits of courtesy; "friendly" letters flew over land and sea between persons who had neither personal relations nor business with each other, whereas proper and formal business-letters scarcely occur except where the letter is addressed to a corporation. In like manner invitations to dinner, the customary new year's presents, the domestic festivals, were divested of their proper character and converted almost into public ceremonials; even death itself did not release the Roman from these attentions to his countless "neighbours," but in order to die with due respectability he had to provide each of them at any rate with a keepsake. Just as in certain circles of our mercantile world, the genuine intimacy of family ties and family friendships had so totally vanished from the Rome of that day that the whole intercourse of business and acquaintance could be garnished with forms and flourishes which had lost all meaning, and thus by degrees the reality came to be superseded by that spectral shadow of "friendship," which holds by no means the least place among the various evil spirits brooding over the proscriptions and civil wars of this age.”

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

Vol. 4, Pt. 2, Translated by W.P. Dickson.
On Roman Friendship in the last ages of the Republic.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Life , Death , Friendship , War

“Tolkien made the wrong choice when he brought Gandalf back. Screw Gandalf. He had a great death and the characters should have had to go on without him.”

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

On a panel at Odyssey Con 2008 (April 2008)

Death

“The scope of time ahead which inﬂuences present behavior, and is therefore to be regarded as part of the present life-space, increases during development. This change in time perspective is one of the most fundamental facts of development. Adolescence seems to be a period of particularly deep change in respect to time perspective. The change can be partly described as a shift in scope. Instead of days, weeks, or months, now years ahead are considered in certain goals. Even more important is the way in which these future events influence present behavior. The ideas of a child of six or eight in regard to his occupation as an adult are not likely to be based on sufficient knowledge of the factors which might help or interfere with the realization of these ideas. They might be based on relatively narrow but definite expectations or might have a dream or playlike character. In other words, "ideal goals" and "real goals" for the distant future are not much distinguished, and this future has more the fluid character of the level of irreality. In adolescence a definite differentiation in regard to the time perspective is likely to occur. Within those parts of the life-space which represent the future, levels of reality and irreality are gradually being differentiated.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Kurt Lewin (1939) "Field theory and experiments in social psychology" in: American Journal of Sociology. Vol 44. p. 879.
1930s

Life , Dreams , Way , Behavior

“The education of Peter III was undermined by a clash of unfortunate circumstances. I will relate what I have seen and heard, and that in itself will clarify many things. I saw Peter III for the first time when he was eleven years old, in Eutin at the home of his guardian, the Prince Bishop of Lübeck. Some months after the death of Duke Karl Friedrich, Peter III’s father, the Prince Bishop had in 1739 assembled all of his family at his home in Eutin to have his ward brought there. My grandmother, mother of the Prince Bishop, and my mother, sister of this same Prince, had come there from Hamburg with me. I was ten years old at the time…. It was then that I heard it said among this assembled family that the young duke was inclined to drink, that his attendants found it difficult to prevent him from getting drunk at meals, that he was restive and hotheaded, did not like his attendants and especially Brümmer, and that otherwise he showed vivacity, but had a delicate and sickly appearance. In truth, his face was pale in color and he seemed to be thin and of a delicate constitution. His attendants wanted to give this child the appearance of a mature man, and to this end they hampered and restrained him, which could only inculcate falseness in his conduct as well as his character.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Memoirs

Death , Truth , Education , Family

“I believe mine would be Piccolo. He was the first character in my manga where I was like, "He has a scary face, but he's so cool!" It really is cliché when bad guys turn into good guys, but it just feels great drawing it!”

Akira Toriyama (1955) manga artist and video game character designer

In response to which character is his favorite from the Dragon Ball manga he created. Interview with Toriyama http://www.thegrandline.com/odainterview.html

Guy , Feeling , Drawing

“Is there any doubt that drug addiction is an escape from an unbearable inner state - from a reality that one cannot deal with - from an atrophying mind one can never fully destroy? If Apollonian reason were unnatural to man, and Dionysian intuition brought him closer to nature and truth, the apostles of irrationality would not have to resort to drugs. Happy, self-confident men do not seek to get stoned. Drug addiction is the attempt to obliterate one's consciousness, the quest for a deliberately-induced insanity. As such, it is so obscene and evil that any doubt about the moral character of its practitioners is itself an obscenity.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

Men , Truth , Confidence , Nature

“Brethren, whatever the temptation is, our safety is not in habits of virtue. It is not in sturdy resolution and strength of character. It is not even in the timely thought of sin's consequences; but our safety is in the Saviour. Christ ever lives and ever intercedes; and it is our strength, our triumph, to rush into His arms of omnipotent protection.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 100.

Time , Christ

“Colonial had been the thing to be
As long as the great issue was to see
What country'd be the one to dominate
By character, by tongue, by native trait,
The new world Christopher Columbus found.
The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed
And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.
Elizabeth the First and England won.
Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

1960s, Dedication (1960)

Age , World

“It has been asserted on this floor that the Republican Party is answerable for the existing state of affairs in the south. I am here to deny this, and to illustrate, I will say that in the State of South Carolina there is no disturbance of an alarming character in any one of the counties in which the Republicans have a majority. The troubles are usually in those sections in which the Democrats have a predominance in power, and, not content with this, desire to be supreme.”

Joseph Hayne Rainey (1832–1887) politician

1871, Speech on the the Ku Klux Klan Bill of 1871 (1 April 1871)

“It's fashionable for modern actors to talk about getting 'inside' a character. But you can't get to the inside without getting the outside right first.”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

Sunday Times interview (1990)

Fashion

“Any evolutionary science… is a close-knit body of theory. It is a theory of a process, of an unfolding sequence… of cumulative causation. The great deserts of the evolutionist leaders… lie… in their having shown how this colorless impersonal sequence of cause and effect can be made use of for theory proper, by virtue of its cumulative character.”

Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) American academic

Source: "Why is economics not an evolutionary science?", 1898, pp. 375-378; As cited in: Geoffrey M. Hodgson, "Veblen and darwinism." International review of sociology 14.3 (2004): 343-361

Lie , Science

“In geometry the following theorems are attributed to him [Thales]—and their character shows how the Greeks had to begin at the very beginning of the theory—(1) that a circle is bisected by any diameter (Eucl. I., Def. 17), (2) that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal (Eucl. I., 5), (3) that, if two straight lines cut one another, the vertically opposite angles are equal (Eucl. I., 15), (4) that, if two triangles have two angles and one side respectively equal, the triangles are equal in all respects (Eucl. I., 26). He is said (5) to have been the first to inscribe a right-angled triangle in a circle: which must mean that he was the first to discover that the angle in a semicircle is a right angle. He also solved two problems in practical geometry: (1) he showed how to measure the distance from the land of a ship at sea (for this he is said to have used the proposition numbered (4) above), and (2) he measured the heights of pyramids by means of the shadow thrown on the ground”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

this implies the use of similar triangles in the way that the Egyptians had used them in the construction of pyramids
Achimedes (1920)

Way , Problem , Sea

“Science views the blood-building and character-influencing ur-organism "water" merely as a chemical compound and provides millions of people with a liquid prepared from this point of view, which is everything but healthy water.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Callum Coats: Water Wizard

People , Water , Science

“American [comedy] was always stronger because you had Lucille Ball, you had Carol Burnett, you had Lily Tomlin, Gilda Radner. I came from a country where we just had Benny Hill girls. You had to run around in a bikini basically in the '80s in Britain. Then I did a sketch show and Pamela Stevenson and then (Dawn) French and (Jennifer) Saunders just shook it all up. But I grew up thinking I could be a character actress. I didn't think I could go into comedy.”

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

Quoted in 2015 in The Hollywood Reporter https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tracey-ullman-bbcs-female-revolution-830223

Girl , Thinking , Country

“A religious spirit animates the infancy of our literature, and must continue to gloe in its maturity. The public taste calls for this quality, and would relish no work in which it might be supplanted by a principle of infidelity. Our best authors have written under the influence of Christian feeling; but had they been destitute of this sentiment, they would have found it necessary to accommodate themselves to the opinions of the people, and follow Christian precedents. The beneficent influence of religion on literature, is like that of our evening sun, when it awakens in the clouds those beautiful and burning tints, which clothe the firmament in gold and purple. It constitutes the heart of learning - the great source of its moral power. Religion addresses itself to the highest and holiest of our sentiments - benevolence and veneration, and their excitement stirs up the imagination, strengthens the undeerstanding, and purifies the taste. Thus, both in the mind of the author and the reader, Christianity and literature act and react on each other, with the effect of elevating both, and carrying the human character to the highest perfection which it is destined to reach. Learning should be proud of this companionship, and exert all her wisdom to render it perpetual.”

Daniel Drake (1785–1852) American physician and writer

Daniel Drake (1834). Discourse on the History, Character, and Prospects of the West: Delivered to the Union Literary Society of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, at Their Ninth Anniversary, September 23, 1834. Truman and Smith. p. 31

Wisdom , People , Religion , Beauty

“[of a character in "The Man Who Gave Up Smoking" who is suffering from a hangover] … the noise of the cat stamping about in the passage outside caused him exquisite discomfort.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Mr Mulliner Speaking

Mr Mulliner Speaking (1929)

Cats , Suffering

“Give good thoughts (nature’s character builder) — you will be good and the world will have good thoughts for you.”

W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author

Be Generous!

World , Nature

“In a 2004 interview with This Is London, Tyson announces that since declaring bankruptcy he has been sleeping in homeless shelters and living off handouts: "I've got nowhere to live. I've been crashing with friends, literally sleeping in shelters. Unsavoury characters are giving me money and I'm taking it. I need it. The drug dealers, they sympathise with me. They see me as some sort of pathetic character."”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-11621981-details/I'm+a+street+bum,+says+broke+Tyson/article.do;jsessionid=dZGvFJZGkLvsnbWWXZrVhsZ2kJlny8kkygtqYThr5ZL2nyWzmSjJ!-686754952
On himself

Money , Sleep

“But in the second half of the twelfth century A. D., we find a new type of Muslim saint appearing on the scene and dominating it in subsequent centuries. That was the sufi joined to a silsila. This is not the place to discuss the character of some outstanding sufis (…) The common name which is used for these early sufis as well as for the teeming breed belonging to the latter-day silsilas, has caused no end of confusion. So far as India is concerned, it is difficult to find a sufi whose consciousness harboured even a trace of any spirituality. By and large, the sufis that functioned in this country were the most fanatic and fundamentalist activists of Islamic imperialism, the same as the latter-day Christian missionaries in the context of Spanish and Portuguese imperialism.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Appearance , Country

“The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented. It's a vast, sentimentalizing structure that reassures the reader, and at every point, offers the comfort of secure moral frameworks and recognizable characters. This whole notion was advanced by Mary McCarthy and many others years ago, that the main function of the novel was to carry out a kind of moral criticism of life. But the writer has no business making moral judgments or trying to set himself up as a one-man or one-woman magistrate's court. I think it's far better, as Burroughs did and I've tried to do in my small way, to tell the truth.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

"J.G. Ballard on William S. Burrough's Naked Truth" by Richard Kadrey in Salon (2 September 1997) http://web.archive.org/web/20000511215816/http://www.salon.com/sept97/wsb2970902.html

Life , Truth , Way , Business

“The second difficulty inherent in the contradictory character of the commodity is this: a commodity must have use value, but not for its owner, for if it had, it would cease to be a commodity.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter VI, Marx, p. 266

“(On her role in The Locket) My character was the greatest challenge I ever had – a destructive young woman who's a kleptomaniac. The form of the film – flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks – was criticised by some reviewers of the time as too confusing. Today, though, its style is highly regarded by film historians... Many movie fans seem to remember me best from the Dr. Kildare series but, first and foremost, I remember The Locket.”

Laraine Day (1920–2007) American actress

The Independent, Obituaries, Laraine Day, November 13, 2007.

Time

“Sir Wilfred Laurier (Prime Minister) – “one of the truest and strongest characters to be met within Canadian history. He was endowed with a warm heart and a copious and rich fancy, though veiled by a somewhat reticent exterior, and he was of friends the most tender and true.””

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

Buckingham and Ross 1892, p.633
His Character

History , Heart

“The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago?”

David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer

[David, Horowitz, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1153, Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too, FrontPageMagazine.com, January 3, 2001, 2007-02-17]
2001

Communication , Failure

Quotes about character page 20

Quotes about character
page 20