Characteristics Quotes - Page 35

• It is a characteristic of old age to find the progress of time accelerated. The less one accomplishes in a given time, the shorter does the retrospect appear.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Progress, Age, Doe

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• Even sleep is characteristic. How beautiful are children in their lovely innocence! how angel-like their blooming features! and how painful and anxious is the sleep of the guilty!

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Beautiful, Children, Sleep

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• the term 'androgyny' ... defines a condition under which the characteristics of the sexes, and the human impulses expressed by men and women, are not rigidly assigned. Androgyny seeks to liberate the individual from the confines of the appropriate.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Sex, Men, Individual

  Carolyn G. Heilbrun (1974). “Toward a recognition of androgyny”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• The last man of the world-city no longer wants to live--he may cling to life as an individual, but as a type, as an aggregate, no, for it is a characteristic of this collective existence that it eliminates the terror of death.

  Oswald Spengler

  Men, Cities, Lasts

  Oswald Spengler, Charles Francis Atkinson (1961). “The Decline of the West...: Perspectives of world-history”

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• nursing was regarded as simply an extension of the unpaid services performed by the housewife - a characteristic attitude that haunts the profession to this day.

  Gerda Lerner

  Attitude, Nursing, Nurse

  Gerda Lerner (2014). “The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History”, p.16, UNC Press Books

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• Did you ever notice how easy it is to forgive a person any number of faults for one endearing characteristic, for a certain style, or some commitment to life - while someone with many good qualities is insupportable for a single defect if it happens to be a boring one?

  Shirley Hazzard

  Commitment, Numbers, Forgiving

  Shirley Hazzard (2004). “The Evening of the Holiday: A Novel”, p.114, Macmillan

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• Want of passion is, I think, a very striking characteristic of Americans, not unrelated to their predilection for violence. For very few people truly have a passionate desire to achieve, and violence serves as a kind of substitute.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Passion, Thinking, People

  Marguerite Yourcenar, Matthieu Galey (1984). “With Open Eyes: Conversations with Matthieu Galey”, Boston : Beacon Press

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• the crucial disadvantage of aggression, competitiveness and skepticism as national characteristics is that these qualities cannot be turned off at five o'clock.

  Margaret Halsey

  Competition, Quality, Clock

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

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• the American family is failing in its job of turning out stable human beings. ... It is failing because Americans do not dare to cultivate in themselves those characteristics which would make family life creative and rewarding. To do so, would ruin them financially.

  Margaret Halsey

  Jobs, Creative, Ruins

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

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• Success does not implant bad characteristics in people. It merely steps up the growth rate of the bad characteristics they already had.

  Margaret Halsey

  People, Growth, Doe

  Margaret Halsey (1977). “No Laughing Matter: The Autobiography of a Wasp”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

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• A tendency to resume the same mode of action at stated times is peculiarly the characteristic of the nervous system; and on this account regularity is of great consequence in exercising the moral and intellectual power. All nervous diseases have a marked tendency to observe regular periods; and the natural inclination to sleep at the approach of night is another instance of the same fact.

  George Combe

  Sleep, Exercise, Night

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• We're used to the characteristics of social media - participation, connection, instant gratification - and when school doesn't offer the same, it's easy to tune out.

  Adora Svitak

  School, Media, Tunes

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• By the artist's seizing any one object from nature, that object no longer is part of nature. One can go so far as to say that theartist creates the object in that very moment by emphasizing its significant, characteristic, and interesting aspects or, rather, by adding the higher values.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nature, Artist, Interesting

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• We can most safely achieve truly universal tolerance when we respect that which is characteristic in the individual and in nations, clinging, though, to the conviction that the truly meritorious is unique by belonging to all of mankind.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Unique, Tolerance, Individual

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• Love brings to light the lofty and hidden characteristics of the lover--what is rare and exceptional in him: to that extent it caneasily be deceptive with respect to what is normal in him.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Love, Light, Normal

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• It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the deliberate reader. To the practical they will be common sense, and to the wise wisdom; as either the traveler may wet his lips, or an army may fill its water-casks at a full stream.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wise, Wisdom, Army

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Illustrated "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"”, p.147, Princeton University Press

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• repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the
  sea;
  the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.

  Marianne Moore

  Sea, Looks, Return

  Marianne Moore (1994). “Complete Poems”, p.49, Penguin

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• You have lived longer than I have and perhaps may have formed a different judgment on better grounds; but my observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest and more disinterested than those of wealthy men.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Integrity, Believe, Men

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.278, Penguin

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• Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth.

  Victor Hugo

  Drama, Epic, History

  Victor Hugo (1909). “The Works of Victor Hugo ...”

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• The Persians are called the French of the East; we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people; a people of wildstrong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Iron, People, Feelings

  Thomas Carlyle (2016). “Heroes and Hero Worship: The Historian”, p.43, 北戴河出版

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• This we take it is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management ofexternal things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Character, Skills, Soul

  Thomas Carlyle (1855). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: By Thomas Carlyle”, p.193

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• In England if something goes wrong--say, if one finds a skunk in the garden--he writes to the family solicitor, who proceeds to take the proper measures; whereas in America, you telephone the fire department. Each satisfies a characteristic need; in the English, love of order and legalistic procedure; and here in America, what you like is something vivid, and red, and swift.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Writing, Garden, Order

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.164, David R. Godine Publisher

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• A nation's domestic and foreign policies and actions should be derived from the same standards of ethics, honesty and morality which are characteristic of the individual citizens of the nation.

  Jimmy Carter

  Honesty, Government, Citizens

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• There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.

  Karl Marx

  Party, Hands, Decay

  Karl Marx, David McLellan (2000). “Karl Marx: Selected Writings”, p.368, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I would write of the universal, not the provincial, in human nature.... I would write of characters, not of characteristics.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Writing, Character, Human Nature

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