Quotes about character
page 6

“Nothing proves the man-made character of religion as obviously as the sick mind that designed hell.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Religion, Hell

“You can often judge the character of a person by the way he treats his fellow men.”

Jeffrey Archer book Only Time Will Tell

Source: Only Time Will Tell

Men, Way, Personality

“Places have their own characters…. But the people begin to look the same.”

Joanne Harris book Chocolat

Source: Chocolat

People

“Character, I think, is the single most important thing in fiction. You might read a book once for its interesting plot—but not twice.”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

Books, Thinking, Reading

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”

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

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Source: The Works Of John Adams, Second President Of The United States
Context: Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better agents, attorneys and trustees.

People, Understanding, Nature, Knowledge

“It's like you're a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say, 'I'm sorry, but this role isn't right for me'. And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: How They Met, and Other Stories

Life, Books

“All novels… are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: The Art of the Novel

Question

“One's character is set at an early age. The choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life. I hate to see you swim out so far you can't swim back.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

Life, Hate, Age

“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.”

Edna O'Brien (1930) Novelist, memoirist, biographer, playwright, poet and short story writer

Tree

“Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.”

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

Love, Joy, Personality

“It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh—I really think that requires”

Jean Webster book Daddy-Long-Legs

Source: Daddy-Long-Legs

Life, Courage, Thinking

“It was nice to see someone who appreciated her for her character, no matter how disgusted Christian was by the idea of ANYONE dating his aunt. And I actually kind of liked seeing Christian so obviously tormented. It was good for him.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Idea

“Where's Amy?" Ian put in. "Will you please get her to call that Evan character? He rings here twenty times a day. He's either the most mule-headed person who ever lived, or he really likes your sister. She has to have mercy on him–on all of us!”

Gordon Korman book The Medusa Plot

Source: The Medusa Plot

Sister, Time, Personality

“Beautiful women rarely possess sufficient depth of character to survive without their pretty feathers.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Women, Beauty

“Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Feeling

“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art, was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character — for this plain reason, that the effect produced, by any narrative of events is essentially dependent, not on the events themselves, but on the human interest which is directly connected with them. It may be possible in novel-writing to present characters successfully without telling a story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters: their existence, as recognizable realities, being the sole condition on which the story can be effectively told. The only narrative which can hope to lay a strong hold on the attention of readers is a narrative which interests them about men and women — for the perfectly obvious reasons that they are men and women themselves.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: Collins explaining what he calls the literary principal guiding him, in the preface of the second edition of The Woman in White. Also in Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins by Maria K. Bachman & Don Richard Cox [University of Tennessee Press, 2003, ISBN 1-572-33274-3] ( p. xiv https://books.google.com/books?id=_X8AlmIp0dwC&pg=PR14)

Women, Men, Hope, Art

“No, none of us seem so very real.

We're only supporting characters in the lives of each other.

Any real truth, any precious fact will always be lost in a mountain of shattered make-believe.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Tell-All

Source: Tell-All

Truth, Mountain, Support

“The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Soul

“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.”

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

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

Dreams

“I hated roses. I hated them for being so trite, so clichéd, a default, all-purpose flower that said I love you, I'm sorry, and get well soon. Give me peonies and tulips, orchids or gardenia. Those were flowers with character.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Love, Hate, Flowers

“It may… be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when I see a fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“If I were invited to a dinner party with my characters, I wouldn't show up.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“Character is that which can do without success.”

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

Success

“There is a curious thing that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character… Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

People, Change, Time

“I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn't so much about plot. It was much more about character.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Life

“Most men have no purpose but to exist, Abraham; to pass quietly through history as minor characters upon a stage they cannot even see”

Seth Grahame-Smith (1976) US fiction author

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Men, History

“We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.”

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

Education, Intelligence

“No change in circumstances can repair a defect of character.”

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

Change

“What are you reading?" Owen asks.
"Charlotte's Web," Liz says. "It's really sad. One of the main characters just died."
"You ought to read the book from end to beginning," Owen jokes. "That way, no one dies, and it's always a happy ending.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Books, Sadness, Way, Reading

“The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Beauty, History

“To find a man's true character, play golf with him.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

“The best books come from someplace deep inside…. Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

Books

“Your success stops where your character stops. You can never rise above the limitations of your character.”

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

Success

“Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

“The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. His need for fresh air and open space is stronger than any hatred.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

"The Destructive Character" Frankfurter Zeitung (20 November 1931)
Source: Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings

“There is a quickness of perception in some, a nicety in the discernment of character, a natural penetration, in short, which no experience in others can equal…”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Nature

“I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Part 1 : Fundamental Techniques in Handling People, p. 36.
Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936)
Context: Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so diplomatic, so adroit at handling people that he was made American Ambassador to France. The secret of his success? "I will speak ill of no man," he said, "... and speak all the good I know of everybody." Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving. "A great man shows his greatness," says Carlyle, "by the way he treats little men."

Fools, Forgiveness, Understanding

“He looked down and did something quite out of character for him: he took hold of Shmuel's tiny hand in his and squeezed it tightly.
"You're my best friend, Shmuel," he said. "My best friend for life.”

John Boyne (1971) Irish novelist, author of children's and youth fiction

Source: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Life

“A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

God

“A man with no enemies is a man with no character.”

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

Quoted in Paul Newman: A Life in Pictures, ed. Yann-Brice Dherbier and Pierre-Henri Verlhac (2006), p. 120
As quoted in Words of Wisdom : From the Greatest Minds of All Time (2004) by Mick Farren
Variant: If you don't have enemies, you don't have character.

“There are no new stories. It all depends on how you handle them. In romances the characters are going to fall in love with each other; you know that when you see the syrupy cover. It's how get there that's the fun.”

Jude Deveraux (1947) American writer

Love, Dependency