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Character Quotes

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Character Quotes

“What then remains, but well our power to use, And keep good-humor still whate'er we lose? And trust me, dear, good-humor can prevail, When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.”

WellsStillsCharacterUseLosesFailingAirRemainsDearFlightScreamTrust MeGood HumorScolding
Book:The Works of Alexander Pope: With a Memoir of the Author, Notes, and Critical Notes on Each Poem
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“There is one way by which a strolling player may be ever secure of success; that is, in our theatrical way of expressing it, to make a great deal of the character. To speak and act as in common life is not playing, nor is it what people come to see; natural speaking, like sweet wine, runs glibly over the palate and scarcely leaves any taste behind it; but being high in a part resembles vinegar, which grates upon the taste, and one feels it while he is drinking.”

PeopleWayFeelsMayCharacterRunningLife IsSpeakNaturalDealsCommonActingBehindsPlayerSweetTasteWineDrinkingSecureOne WayTheatricalStrollingPalateVinegarCommon LifeGrateSweet Wine
Book:The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: The bee. Essays. Unacknowledged essays. Prefaces, introductions, etc
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“The polite of every country seem to have but one character. A gentleman of Sweden differs but little, except in trifles, from one of any other country. It is among the vulgar we are to find those distinctions which characterize a people.”

PeopleLittlesCountryCharacterSeemsGentlemanDistinctionOther CountriesPoliteVulgarPolitenessTriflesSweden
Book:An inquiry into the present state of polite learning. The Bee. History of Cyrillo Padovano. Life of Dr. Parnell. Life of Lord Bolingbroke. Prefaces and introductions
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“It has been remarked that almost every character which has excited either attention or pity has owed part of its success to merit, and part to a happy concurrence of circumstances in its favor. Had Caesar or Cromwell exchanged countries, the one might have been a sergeant and the other an exciseman.”

Has BeensCountryCharacterMightAttentionCircumstancesFortuneExcitedFavorsPityMeritMight Have BeenSergeantsConcurrenceCromwell
Book:Essays and poems, by Dr. Oliver Goldsmith. To which are prefixed, memoirs of the author
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“The father's life is surrounded by mysterious prestige: the hours he spends in the home, the room where he works, the objects around him, his occupations, his habits, have a sacred character. It is he who feeds the family, is the one in charge and the head. Usually he works outside the home, and it is through him that the household communicates with the rest of the world: he is the embodiment of this adventurous, immense, difficult, and marvelous world; he is transcendence, he is God.”

WorldCharacterHomeLife IsFatherDifficultHoursRoomsObjectsHabitSacredCommunicateWork OutMysteriousOccupationHouseholdImmenseMarvelousTranscendenceAdventurousPrestigeEmbodiment
Author:Simone de Beauvoir
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“As there is much beast and some devil in man, so is there some angel and some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life never destroyed.”

MenMayCharacterDevilAngelDestroyedThis LifeBeast
Book:The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
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“How wonderfully beautiful is the delineation of the characters of the three patriarchs in Genesis! To be sure if ever man could, without impropriety, be called, or supposed to be, "the friend of God," Abraham was that man. We are not surprised that Abimelech and Ephron seem to reverence him so profoundly. He was peaceful, because of his conscious relation to God.”

IfsMenCharacterSeemsBeautifulThreeConsciousRelationPeacefulSupposed To BeReverenceAbrahamGenesis
Book:Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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“That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false.”

IfsGivingDoeRealCharacterWould BeQualityOpinionEvidenceMarkErrorsQueensFancyFalsehoodDeceivingInfallibleDeceitful
Book:Thoughts of Blaise Pascal
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“Tragedy massages the human ego even as comedy deflates it. ... Tragedy pits us against large foes and the trip wire is our own character. ... In comedy we fall afoul of one another. Comedy depends on social life, on our behavior in groups. In tragedy you can observe one human against the gods. In comedy it's one human versus other humans and often one man (or woman if I'm writing it) against her own worst impulses.”

IfsMenWritingHumansCharacterFallSocialComedyGroupsWorstDependsEgoBehaviorTragedyImpulseOne ManVersusFoeWirePitsSocial LifeMassage
Author:Rita Mae Brown
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“Sport strips away personality, letting the white bone of character shine through. Sport gives players an opportunity to know and test themselves. The great difference between sport and art is that sport, like a sonnet, forces beauty within its own system. Art, on the other hand, cyclically destroys boundaries and breaks free.”

KnowsGivingArtCharacterHandsOpportunityForceSportsDifferencesWhiteBreakPlayerPersonalityArt IsTestsShiningBonesBoundariesSonnetBeauty Within
Author:Rita Mae Brown
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“It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.”

GivingWellsHardCharacterDiesFightingGrowsBornSinStruggleYouthCharmTemperIntolerance
Book:GERTRUDE STEIN Ultimate Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Plays, Memoirs & Essays: Three Lives, Tender Buttons, Geography and Plays, Matisse, Picasso and Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas…
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“The kind of loving women and men have in them and the ways it comes out from them makes for them the bottom nature in them, gives to them their kind of thinking, makes the character they have all their living in them, makes them then their kind of women and men and there are always many millions made of each kind of them.”

ThinkingMenWayGivingKindMadeCharacterMillionsMen And WomenBottomLoving A Woman
Book:THE MAKING OF AMERICANS (Modern Classics Series): A History of a Family's Progress
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“I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be within and without: . . . with such differences as might suit and express each man's character and occupation, and partly his history.”

MenMayCharacterMightLastsHouseDifferencesRichOrdinaryBuiltArchitectureLovelySuitsOccupationDwelling
Book:The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals and Religion: Selected from the Works of John Ruskin...
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“There is a certain period of the soul-culture when it begins to interfere with some of characters of typical beauty belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earthen vessel; and there is, in this indication of subduing the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect material form. We conceive, I think, more nobly of the weak presence of Paul than of, the fair and ruddy countenance of David.”

ThinkingWaySoulCharacterFormCertainCultureHeavenPerfectBeautyMoralMaterialsHigherPeriodsGloryFairsIdealsWeakIntellectFleshEnthusiasmMortalsBurningRangeImmortalBelongingInterfereTypicalVesselIndicationStirringCountenance
Author:John Ruskin
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“Uncontrollable consumerism has become a watchword of our culture despite regular and compelling calls for its end. The United States has more malls than high schools; Americans spend more time shopping than reading. ... Some of the most insightful writing about the American character over the nation's history has been about neither freedom nor democracy but about the crazed impulse to acquire things.”

WritingHas BeensEndsStatesCharacterSchoolCultureReadingNationsUnitedUnited StatesDemocracyHigh SchoolDespiteImpulseAcquireMore TimeInsightfulShoppingCompellingConsumerismMallsUncontrollableAmerican Character
Book:Loud and Clear
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“Our friends should be our incentives to right, but not only our guiding, but our prophetic, stars. To love by right is much, to love by faith is more; both are the entire love, without which heart, mind, and soul cannot be alike satisfied. We love and ought to love one another, not merely for the absolute worth of each, but on account of a mutual fitness of temporary character.”

ShouldMindHeartSoulCharacterStarsFriendsOughtAccountsAbsolutesSatisfiedMutualTemporaryIncentivesLove One AnotherPropheticHeart Mind And Soul
Author:Margaret Fuller
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“The persons whom you have idolized can never, in the end, be ungrateful, and, probably, at the time of retreat they still do justice to your heart. But, so long as you must draw persons too near you, a temporary recoil is sure to follow. It is the character striving to defend itself from a heating and suffocating action upon it.”

HeartPersonsLongStillsEndsCharacterActionJusticeDrawsStriveTemporaryRetreatUngratefulSuffocatingHeatingRecoilIdolized
Book:The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller's Life and Writings
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“I never heard of anybody who admired the character of sheep. Even the gentlest human personalities in contact with them are annoyed by their lack of brains, courage and initiative, by their extraordinary ability to get themselves into uncomfortable or dangerous situations and then wait in inert helplessness for someone to rescue them.”

HumansCharacterWaitingAbilityBrainSituationHeardDangerousPersonalityExtraordinaryContactUncomfortableSheepInitiativeRescueAnnoyedHelplessnessHuman PersonalityDangerous Situations
Author:Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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“Vermont tradition is based on the idea that group life should leave each person as free as possible to arrange his own life. This freedom is the only climate in which (we feel) a human being may create his own happiness. ... Character itself lies deep and secret below the surface, unknown and unknowable by others. It is the mysterious core of life, which every man or woman has to cope with alone, to live with, to conquer and put in order, or to be defeated by.”

MenFeelsShouldHumansMayPersonsIdeasCharacterLyingOrderHuman BeingsSecretGroupsTraditionClimateSurfaceCoreEvery ManMysteriousConquerDefeatedVermontBelow The Surface
Author:Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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“The teachers of small children are paid more than they were, but still far less than the importance of their work deserves, and they are still regarded by the unenlightened majority as insignificant compared to those who impart information to older children and adolescents, a class of pupils which, in the nature of things, is vastly more able to protect its own individuality from the character of the teacher.”

ChildrenStillsCharacterAbleEducationClassTeacherTeachingInformationProtectDeserveImportancePaidMajorityIndividualityInsignificantPupilsImpartSmall Child
Book:A Montessori Mother
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