Quotes about character
page 9

Jim Gaffigan photo

“I liked the idea that my character was not gonna be the typical dumb guy that I play, typically. I also loved the fact that it was dealing with kind of adult-extended adolescence, which I think is always interesting -- a bunch of people that don't wanna grow up.”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

On his character in My Boys — interview in Bob Kostanczuk (December 15, 2006) "From 'Pale Force' to 'My Boys' Region native Jim Gaffigan keeps comedy career chuggin' with new sitcom", Post-Tribune, p. D1.

Maxine Waters photo
Paulo Freire photo

“The unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 3, on dialogue.

Menina Fortunato photo
David Morrison photo
Russell Crowe photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Bill Hybels photo
Bill Hybels photo
Frank Harris photo
Lydia Maria Child photo
Albrecht Thaer photo

“Arriving in Berlin, I found myself in my element, and began to breathe freely. Jerusalem and Lessing had given us letters of introduction to the greatest men in Berlin; but they knew us already, Leisewitz as author of "Julius Von Tarent," and myself as author of my Dissertation. We had daily the choice of the first society; covers were laid for us in the first families daily, for dinner as well as supper. Von Zetlitz sent a general invitation that covers were laid for us every day during our stay in Berlin. Most of the time we could spare was divided between physicians and philosophers, of which the latter had the greater share. Spalding, Mendelsohn, Eberhard, Engel, Nicolai, Reichard, and Madame Bamberger, daughter of Doctor Sack, Bishop of Berlin, honoured us with their most sincere friendship. The latter, a highly gifted and accomplished lady, possessed the rare art of spreading over the most abstract hypothesis and theorem the brightest and most charming light; Jerusalem, the father of the ill-fated Werther (see the "Sorrows of Werther," by Goethe), used to send her his works to correct, and she alone was able to console and comfort him, when he was informed of the death of his beloved son. This amiable lady assumes in common life the character of a plain woman, and when at court, as friend of the Queen and the Princess Amalie, she won all hearts by her truly noble man ners and unconstrained courtesy: at court beloved, she was admired, nay, adored in the philosophical clubs. But do not think that here alone we spent all our time; Madame Bamberger knew how to blend study with amusement; she issued frequently cards of invitation to select parties, for suppers and balls, and her house was the point of union of all that was learned, beautiful, and amiable. Thus Berlin became my Paradise. I had the most tempting offers from the Minister of State to stay here; but the illness of my father obliged me, after a stay of three months, to return home. I visited Lessing on my journey back; stayed two days, which were the most interesting of all days I ever remember.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Erich Fromm photo
Michael Moorcock photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“Razed the garden, profaned the chalices and the altars, by horse the Huns broke into the Monastic library and they tore the incomprehensible books and they vituperated them and they burnt them, fearing their symbols and characters might be concealing secret blasphemies against their God, who was an iron scimitar…”

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

Arrasado el jardín, profanados los cálices y las aras, entraron a caballo los hunos en la biblioteca monástica y rompieron los libros incomprensibles y los vituperaron y los quemaron, acaso temerosos de que las letras encubrieran blasfemias contra su dios, que era una cimitarra de hierro.
The Theologians [Los Teólogos]

Hans Arp photo
Katie Couric photo

“The road less traveled is sometimes fraught with barricades, bumps, and uncharted terrain. But it is on that road where your character is truly tested”

Katie Couric (1957) American journalist

Graduation speech at Williams College, 2007 http://www.graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0029-couric.htm

Horace photo

“The Muse gave the Greeks their native character, and allowed them to speak in noble tones, they who desired nothing but praise.”
Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo Musa loqui, præter laudem nullius avaris. . .

Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo
Musa loqui, præter laudem nullius avaris. . .

Line 323
Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC)

Cory Doctorow photo
Frank Chodorov photo

“Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man — in temperament, character, and capacity — and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov (1980), p. 397, “Freedom Is Better,” Plain Talk, (November 1949)

David Brooks photo
Neamat Imam photo
Charles Dickens photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
André Maurois photo
Charles Darwin photo
Camille Pissarro photo
Nicolas Chamfort photo

“Stubbornness equals character roughly as lust equals love.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Reflections

Vanna Bonta photo

“Through characters, non-linear plot lines, or the involvement of multiple dimensions, it ultimately witnesses the physical world as inextricable from consciousness or the observer of that world.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview (2007)

Lewis Mumford photo

“The history of all the great characters of the Bible is summed up in this one sentence: — they acquainted themselves with God, and acquiesced in His will in all things.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 435.

Maddox photo

“General Grievous," a bad guy so sinister, his very name stands for PAIN AND SUFFERING. Nice job assholes… Why not just call all your characters "Evil" and "Bad" next time?”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Star Wars Episode III: a steaming pile of Sith http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=episode3
The Best Page in the Universe

Berthe Morisot photo
Thomas Chalmers photo

“This character wherewith we sink into the grave at death is the very character wherewith we shall reappear at the resurrection.”

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Scottish mathematician and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 180.

Harold Pinter photo
Charlotte Brontë photo
Henry James photo
Robert Crumb photo
Hugo Black photo
Charles Evans Hughes photo

“Public officers, whose character and conduct remain open to debate and free discussion in the press, find their remedies for false accusations in actions under libel laws providing for redress and punishment, and not in proceedings to restrain the publication of newspapers and periodicals. The general principle that the constitutional guaranty of the liberty of the press gives immunity from previous restraints has been approved in many decisions under the provisions of state constitutions. The importance of this immunity has not lessened. While reckless assaults upon public men, and efforts to bring obloquy upon those who are endeavoring faithfully to discharge official duties, exert a baleful influence and deserve the severest condemnation in public opinion, it cannot be said that this abuse is greater, and it is believed to be less, than that which characterized the period in which our institutions took shape. Meanwhile, the administration of government has become more complex, the opportunities for malfeasance and corruption have multiplied, crime has grown to most serious proportions, and the danger of its protection by unfaithful officials and of the impairment of the fundamental security of life and property by criminal alliances and official neglect, emphasizes the primary need of a vigilant and courageous press, especially in great cities. The fact that the liberty of the press may be abused by miscreant purveyors of scandal does not make any the less necessary the immunity of the press from previous restraint in dealing with official misconduct. Subsequent punishment for such abuses as may exist is the appropriate remedy consistent with constitutional privilege.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931).
Judicial opinions

Roger Ebert photo
Frank Wilczek photo

“A good work of art reveals something that is in reality. A new metaphor, a new myth, a new type of character, all these reveal a feature of reality for which we previously had no name.”

Michael Roberts (writer) (1902–1948) English schoolteacher and man of letters

Hulme and Modrern Poetry' in ' T E Hulme ',Carcanet Press,Manchester, 1982

Henry Adams photo
Anthony Stewart Head photo

“I suppose I would be a logical choice to play the Doctor just because Giles, my character in Buffy, has the same light and dark sides and quirkiness as Doctor Who.”

Anthony Stewart Head (1954) English actor

Buffy man tops 'next Dr Who' poll http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3276905.stm

Tryon Edwards photo
Henryk Sienkiewicz photo
Frank McCourt photo
Muhammad photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo
Sam Rayburn photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
George Eliot photo
George Hendrik Breitner photo

“This place [Breitner's new residential location at the Jacob van Campen-straat (De Pijp district), Amsterdam - a newly built street with construction activities all around], is just about the same as the Hobbema-straat, and that is precisely not the character of Amsterdam..”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Het is hier [Breitner's nieuwe woonlocatie aan de Jacob van Campenstraat in De Pijp, Amsterdam - een toen pas-gebouwde straat met bouw-activiteiten rondom], zowat net eender als de Hobbemastraat, en dat is nu juist niet 't karakter van Amsterdam..
Quote in Breitner's letter, January 1887, to his friend Herman van der Weele; as cited in George Hendrik Breitner in Amsterdam, J. F. Heijbroek, Erik Schmitz (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek); uitgeverij THOTH, Bussum, 2014, p. 12
Breitner preferred the atmosphere of the old city-center of Amsterdam: like Oudeschans, the old store-houses, Jo de Bree-straat, etc.
before 1890

Nelson Mandela photo

“It is in the character of growth that we should learn from both pleasant and unpleasant experiences.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Mandela on character, Foreign Correspondent's Association's Annual Dinner, Johannesburg, South Africa (21 November 1997). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes
1990s

Wassily Kandinsky photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Rick Santorum photo
Arthur James Balfour photo
Theodor Mommsen photo
Burkard Schliessmann photo

“The trends that produced Schumann’s early piano works started out not so much from Weber’s refined brilliance as from Schubert’s more intimate and deeply soul-searching idiom. His creative imagination took him well beyond the harmonic sequences known until his time. He looked at the fugues and canons of earlier composers and discovered in them a Romantic principle. In the interweaving of the voices, the essence of counterpoint found its parallel in the mysterious relationships between the human psyche and exterior phenomena, which Schumann felt impelled to express. Schubert’s broad melodic lyricism has often been contrasted with Schumann’s terse, often quickly repeated motifs, and by comparison Schumann is often erroneously seen as short-winded. Yet it is precisely with these short melodic formulae that he shone his searchlight into the previously unplumbed depths of the human psyche. With them, in a complex canonic web, he wove a dense tissue of sound capable of taking in and reflecting back all the poetical character present. His actual melodies rarely have an arioso form; his harmonic system combines subtle chromatic progressions, suspensions, a rapid alternation of minor and major, and point d’orgue. The shape of Schumann’s scores is characterized by contrapuntal lines, and can at first seem opaque or confused. His music is frequently marked by martial dotted rhythms or dance-like triple time signatures. He loves to veil accented beats of the bar by teasingly intertwining two simultaneous voices in independent motion. This highly inde-pendent instrumental style is perfectly attuned to his own particular compositional idiom. After a period in which the piano had indulged in sensuous beauty of sound and brilliant coloration, in Schumann it again became a tool for conveying poetic monologues in musical terms.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“I started to see this pattern being there. It was a small office and you can hear everybody talking. And it was just always a lot of activity. Because, you know it started out with the FBI Filegate problem when Craig Livingston (director of the White House’s Office of Personnel Security) got all of those FBI files on so many people. Like 900 files. And if they said 900 it was probably a thousand nine hundred. And then you had the travel office fiasco. Then Whitewater in ‘94 was really starting to kick in. And at that time Robert Fiske was the special prosecutor; that’s before Ken Starr. And they were looking at indicting all kinds of people…And of course, the Clintons were very, very involved with that. There were just so many of those scandals. Cheryl Mills was in and out of the office. The whole cast of characters. They’ve been around forever. I just started hearing over and over and over again. The first time I heard it I thought it, wow! And I heard Bernie Nussbaum talking extremely very loudly. To Hillary. And basically said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Hillary. All you have to say is you don’t recall. You don’t remember anything. Nobody can argue with that.”

Kathleen Willey (1946) White House aide

Kathleen Willey: I Overheard White House Staff Teaching Hillary Her Trademark ‘I Don’t Recall’ Defense https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/09/05/kathleen-willey-overheard-white-house-staff-teaching-hillary-trademark-dont-recall-defense/ (September 3, 2016)

Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“The most notable difference (of the American character) lies in the psychology of work. In the Orient one works to live; in Europe one works to consume; in America one works to work. These are the three stages of a progressive evolution.”

Corrado Gini (1884–1965) Italian statistician

As quoted in The Work of the Catholic Church in the United States of America (Nardini "Artistic" Publishing Company, 1956), p. 10.

Thomas Hardy photo
Plutarch photo
Mohammed Alkobaisi photo

“A Muslim should live up to his character, and employ his powers in doing what is good, beneficial and helpful.”

Mohammed Alkobaisi (1970) Iraqi Islamic scholar

Understanding Islam, "Morals and Ethics" http://vod.dmi.ae/media/96716/Ep_03_Morals_and_Ethics Dubai Media

Albert Finney photo

“To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.”

Albert Finney (1936–2019) English actor

As quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988).

Vytautas Juozapaitis photo
Gertrude Stein photo
Clinton Edgar Woods photo
Roger Ebert photo

“It amazes me that filmmakers will still film, and audiences will still watch, relationships so bankrupt of human feeling that the characters could be reading dialogue written by a computer.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/summer-school-1987 of Summer School (22 July 1987)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo
Brian Clevinger photo

“X-Men Legends 2, it would be so much easier to enjoy you if your characters would ever shut up.”

Brian Clevinger (1978) writer

http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=050920

Lisa Wilcox photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Camille Paglia photo
André Maurois photo
Bill Clinton photo
Epifanio de los Santos photo

“Before the conquest, the Filipinos had a literature written in characters of their own, and its manifestation in verse constituted of maxims, proverbs, boat-songs, nuptial-songs, war songs, love-songs, and the like.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

As a quote in Quirino & Hilario's "Short History of Tagalog Literature" in Thinking for Ourselves. Manila Oriental Co. 1924, p. 56-57.

George Bernard Shaw photo
Benjamin Mkapa photo
Walt Disney photo