Character Quotes - Page 17

• It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.

  John Fowles

  Events

  JOHN FOWLES (1969). “THE FRENCH LIEUTENTANT'S WOMAN”

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• the depth of a person's character is not measured by his or her physical strength, but by the depth of his or her nobility.

  Frank Peretti

  Depth, Physical Strength, Nobility

  Frank E. Peretti (2001). “No More Victims”, Thomas Nelson Incorporated

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• It is practically an axiom in psychiatry that precocious intellect combined with physical weakness can give rise to many unpleasant character traits - avarice, delusions of grandeur , and obsessive masturbation, to name just a few.

  Sam Savage

  Names, Giving, Weakness

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• It is both revealing and invigorating to occasionally set aside the worries of life, seek the company of a friendly book and mingle with the great of the earth, counsel with the wise of all time, look into the unlived days with prophets...To become acquainted with real nobility as it walks the pages of history and science and literature is to strengthen character and develop life in its finer meanings.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Wise, Real, Book

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• But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country-but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Country, Fear And Loathing, Insane

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time”, p.535, Simon and Schuster

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• It's rather disconcerting to sit around a table in a critique of someone else's work, only to realize that the antagonist in the story is none other than yourself, and no one present thinks you're a very likable character.

  Michelle Richmond

  Thinking, Stories, Tables

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• Writing is hard work, and if anything's true about the process, it's that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What's less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I've changed the cat little because I didn't know what my characters were going to say next.

  Adam Johnson

  Hard Work, Writing, Cat

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• Rebellion is necessary for development of character.

  Cynthia Voigt

  Development, Rebellion

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• Don't equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don't let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you'd like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea.

  Harvey Mackay

  Friday, Monday, Morning

  Harvey Mackay (1996). “Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, & Outnegotiate Your Competition”, Ballantine Books

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• I'd like to find whoever taught the Stump that extra work builds character and push him down the stairs," Neal told Kel at lunch.

  Tamora Pierce

  Lunch, Taught, Stumps

  Tamora Pierce (2014). “Protector of the Small Quartet”, p.81, Random House Books for Young Readers

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• I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story.

  Isak Dinesen

  Writing, Feelings, Stories

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• There are essential and inessential insanities. The later are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon.

  Tom Robbins

  Moon, Insanity, Essentials

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• My characters are more like men than these real men are, see. They're rough and rude, they got hands and they got bellies. They hate and they lust; break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.

  Robert E. Howard

  Hate, Real, Men

  Letter to Harold Preece, c. January or February 1928.

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• But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.

  Dodie Smith

  Real, Book, Pride

  Dodie Smith (2017). “I Capture the Castle: Young Adult Edition”, p.65, St. Martin's Griffin

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• To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Book, Winning, Order

  Michel de Montaigne (1948). “Selections from the essays of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne”

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• I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.

  Saul Bellow

  Fate, Men, Doors

  1953 The Adventures of Augie March.

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• 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.

  John F. Kennedy

  Wise, Successful, Political

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• And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Fire, Doors, Hands

  Vladimir Nabokov (1992). “Pale fire”

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• The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Mean, Government, Self

  Calvin Coolidge (1924). “Calvin Coolidge, His Ideals of Citizenship as Revealed Through His Speeches and Writings”

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• There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Real, Hands, Giving

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• To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Positive, Wisdom

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.207, Penguin

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• The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Ambition, Pride

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2800, Delphi Classics

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• In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Love, Heartbreak, Feelings

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.20, A&C Black

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• Nothing marks a man's character better than his attraction to intelligence.

  Terry Goodkind

  Men, Intelligence, Novelists

  Terry Goodkind (2015). “Soul Of The Fire”, p.56, Head of Zeus

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• People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called *character,* a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to the other, more instantly negotiable virtues.... character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs.

  Joan Didion

  Spring, Responsibility, Self

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Jul 09, 2011

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