Character Quotes - Page 18

• A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Strong, Men, Experience

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

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• But in a country where you hang your dead up on walls and pride whether or not a man bears a javelin more than his character, how am I to persuade you out of a war? It would be suicide for Kildenree to war on Bayern and butchery for Bayern to attack Kildenree. If you don't believe me, then send me back. Or if you don't trust me to leave, I'll return to my little room on the west wall and tend your geese, and you can be sure that on my watch no thieves will touch my flock.

  Shannon Hale

  Suicide, Country, Wall

  Shannon Hale (2010). “The Goose Girl”, p.374, A&C Black

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• Chris Claremont once said of Alan Moore, "if he could plot, we'd all have to get together and kill him." Which utterly misses the most compelling part of Alan's writing, the way he develops and expresses ideas and character. Plot does not define story. Plot is the framework within which ideas are explored and personalities and relationships are unfolded.

  Warren Ellis

  Writing, Ideas, Personality

  "Bad Signal". Comic book by Warren Ellis, 2003.

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• Sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, " I cannot say that i have heard him precisely snore, and therefore must not make that statement. But on winter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at his table, I have heard him, what I should prefer to describe as partially choke. I have heard him on such occasions produce sounds of a nature similar to what may be heard in dutch clocks. Not," said Mrs. Sparsit, with a lofty sense of giving strict evidence, " That I would convey any imputation on his moral character. Far from it.

  Charles Dickens

  Winter, Giving, Dutch

  Charles Dickens “Hard Times”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Love, Heart, Ideas

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• With thought, patience, and discrimination, book passion becomes the signature of a person's character.

  Nicholas A. Basbanes

  Book, Passion, Signatures

  Nicholas A. Basbanes (1995). “A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books”, Henry Holt & Company

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• I'm beginning to feel that no author has the right to tear his characters apart if he doesn't know how, or feel that he knows how (poor sucker) to put them together again. I'm tired—my God, so tired—of leaving them all broken on the page with just 'The End' written underneath.

  J. D. Salinger

  Tired, Together Again, Broken

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• A certain critic -- for such men, I regret to say, do exist -- made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.' He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have out-generalled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Summer, Children, Regret

  P.G. Wodehouse (2009). “Summer Lightning: (Blandings Castle)”, p.10, Random House

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• Not long ago I learned from a certain person in considerable detail about the worthlessness of your character. All the same, it is you who have given me strength, you who have put the rainbow of revolution in my breast. It is you who have given an object to my life.

  Osamu Dazai

  Long Ago, Rainbow, Revolution

  Osamu Dazai (1968). “The Setting Sun”, p.174, New Directions Publishing

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• in addition to the conditions under which life is given to man on earth, and partly out of them, men constantly create their own, self-made conditions, which, their human origins notwithstanding, possess the same conditioning power as natural things. whatever touches or enters into a sustained relationship with human life immediately assumes the character of a condition of human existence. this is why men, no matter what they do, are always conditioned beings. whatever enters the human world of its own accord or is drawn into it by human effort becomes part of the human condition.

  Hannah Arendt

  Men, Self, Effort

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• The sisters and brothers that you meet give you the materials which your character uses to build itself. It is said that some people are born great, others achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. In truth, the ways in which your character is built have to do with all three of those. Those around you, those you choose, and those who choose you.

  Maya Angelou

  Brother, People, Giving

  "America's Renaissance Woman". The Academy of Achievement interview, www.achievement.org. January 22, 1997.

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• I entirely agree that a historian ought to be precise in detail; but unless you take all the characters and circumstances into account, you are reckoning without the facts. The proportions and relations of things are just as much facts as the things themselves.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Details, Facts, Reckoning

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• Vice does not lose its character by becoming fashionable.

  John Wesley

  Religion, Vices, Doe

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• But mostly they were lies I told; it wasn't my fault, I couldn't remember, because it was as though I'd been to one of those supernatural castles visited by characters in legends: once away, you do not remember, all that is left is the ghostly echo of haunting wonder.

  Truman Capote

  Lying, Echoes, Castles

  Truman Capote (2013). “Portraits and Observations”, p.20, Modern Library

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• The people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping...something runs among them, an exchange of glances like lines that connect one figure with another and draw arrows, stars, triangles, until all combinations are used up in a moment, and other characters come on to the scene.

  Italo Calvino

  Running, Stars, Moving

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• The most serious point in the case is the disposition of the child." What on earth has that to do with it?" I ejaculated. My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining insight as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Children, Real, Men

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2012). “The Complete Sherlock Holmes: with an introduction from Robert Ryan”, p.844, Simon and Schuster

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• The German people in its whole character is not warlike, but rather soldierly, that is, while they do not want war, they are not frightened by the thoughts of it.

  Adolf Hitler

  War, People, History

  Adolf Hitler (1994). “The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939: An English Translation of Representative Passages Arranged Under Subjects and Edited by Norman H. Baynes”

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• Character is plot, plot is character.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Writing, Plot

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• The ear participates, and helps arrange marriages; the eye has already made love with what it sees. The eye knows pleasure, delights in the body's shape: the ear hears words that talk about all this. When hearing takes place, character areas change; but when you see, inner areas change. If all you know about fire is what you have heard see if the fire will agree to cook you! Certain energies come only when you burn. If you long for belief, sit down in the fire! When the ear receives subtly; it turns into an eye. But if words do not reach the ear in the chest, nothing happens.

  Rumi

  Eye, Fire, Long

  Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (Maulana), Jelaluddin Rumi, Kabir Helminski, Andrew Harvey (2005). “The Rumi Collection: An Anthology of Translations of Mevlâna Jalâluddin Rumi”, p.46, Shambhala Publications

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• A noble and God-like character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with God-like thoughts.

  James Allen

  Thinking, Long, Effort

  James Allen (2010). “As You Think: Second Edition”, p.24, New World Library

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• A particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot fail to produce its results on the character and circumstances. A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.

  James Allen

  Inspirational, Men, Thinking

  James Allen (1923). “As a Man Thinketh”, p.13, New Line Publishing

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• It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

  Joseph Heller

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Truth

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.336, Simon and Schuster

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• We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.

  Georges Simenon

  Differences, Novel

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• ''Women of the Gallagher Academy, who comes here?" she asked. Just then, every girl at every table (even the newbies) stood and said in unison, "We are the sisters of Gillian." "Why do you come?" my mother asked. "To learn her skills. Honor her sword. And keep her secrets." "To what end do you work?" "To the cause of justice and light." "How long will you strive?" "For all the days of our lives," we finished and I felt a little like a character in one of my grandma's soap operas.

  Ally Carter

  Girl, Mother, Grandma

  "Gallagher Girls: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You". Book by Ally Carter, April 1, 2006.

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• Start dating someone who is funny, someone who has what in high school you called a "really great sense of humor" and what now your creative writing class calls "self-contempt giving rise to comic form." Write down all of his jokes, but don't tell him you are doing this. Make up anagrams of his old girlfriend's name and name all of your socially handicapped characters with them. Tell him his old girlfriend is in all of your stories and then watch how funny he can be, see what a really great sense of humor he can have.

  Lorrie Moore

  Girlfriend, Writing, School

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