Home / Topics / Character Quotes

Character Quotes

Browse 17579 quotes about Character.

Character Quotes

“I feel like when you do things with such a small budget, it actually makes you be more creative... and allows you to concentrate more on the story and the characters. I think that there is something about dirty, gritty and raw filmmaking that makes it feel a little more natural and makes it easier to connect with the action.”

Thinking Feels Littles Character Stories Action Natural Creative Easier Dirty Budgets Filmmaking

Author:Oren Peli

“I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.”

Ifs Feels I Can Real Matter Character Action Interesting Reader Kings Regard Meetings Queens Plot Compelled Twists Meeting Someone Plot Twists

Author:Maggie Stiefvater

“I'd always wanted to be an action heroine. That's a chick dream, getting to wear a leather bodysuit and be blonde and kick ass. But, what really attracted me to 'Dredd' was the script. It was fantastic! It was about people and characters, and not just about explosions and fighting.”

People Character Dream Action Wanted Fighting Scripts Ass Fantastic Kicks Explosions Chicks Leather Blonde Heroines Kick Ass

Author:Olivia Thirlby

“Imagination, it turns out, is a great deal like reporting in your own head. Here is a paradox of fiction-writing. You are crafting something from nothing, which means, in one sense, that none of it is true. Yet in the writing, and perhaps in the reading, some of a character's actions or lines are truer than others.”

Writing Mean Character Action Turns Reading Imagination Lines Deals Fiction Paradox Fiction Writing

Author:Amy Waldman

“I think you will agree that I am alive in every part of this book; turn back twenty, thirty, one hundred pages - I am back there. That is why I hate the story; characters are not snakes that they must shed their skins on every page - there can only be one action: what a man is. When you have understood this, you will be through with novels.”

Thinking Men Writing Book Character Stories Action Hate Turns Novel Alive Pages Understood Hundred Skins I Hate Twenties Agree Thirty Shed Snakes I Am Alive

Author:Kenneth Patchen

“I think action should be revealed through character, so if you have a plot problem, it's probably a character problem.”

Ifs Thinking Should Character Problem Action Plot

Author:Zoe Kazan

“Character is developed one positive action at a time. Therefore nothing is actually trivial in our lives. To grow in character development, pay attention to seemingly trivial matters. Someone who grows from each minor life event will eventually reach high levels of character perfection.”

Matter Character Action Grows Levels Pay Attention Our Lives Events Development Perfection Pay Attention Minors High Level Character Development

Author:Zelig Pliskin

“Good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good habits of the mind, habits of the heart, and habits of action.”

Mind Heart Character Action Desire Knowing Psychology Habit Integrity Mindset Good Character Good Habits

Book:Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility

Source: Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility

“I'd love to do a Paul Greengrass movie, or something like that, that's a character-driven action film. I'd like someone to make me go to the gym every day, and all that stuff. I don't know. Wherever the good characters are, I tend to try to get a job. It was nice because this was dipping my toe in the action genre. Maybe I might put my foot in, next time.”

Knows Trying Character Might Action Jobs Film Next Stuff Nice Feet Driven Genre Gym Next Time Toes Good Character Action Films

Author:Carey Mulligan

“What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.”

Character Action Political Certain Politics Moral Virtue Produce Citizens Politician Anxiety Performances Fellows Anxious Virtuous Disposition Statesmen Moral Character

Book:Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics

Source: Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics

“At any age it does us no harm to look over our past shortcomings and plan to improve our characters and actions in the coming year.”

Years Looks Doe Character Age Action Past Plans Harm Our Past Shortcomings Miscellaneous

Book:Eleanor Roosevelt's My Day: Her Acclaimed Columns, 1936-1945

Source: Eleanor Roosevelt's My Day: Her Acclaimed Columns, 1936-1945

“If you feel an aversion to a person--that is, an unexplainable feeling of dislike or distaste for him--it is the most dangerous time for a proper opinion of him, his character, or his actions. Any judgment you pass upon him at such a time is bound to be unfair.”

Ifs Feels Persons Character Feelings Action Justice Opinion Dangerous Judgment Bounds Dislike Unfair Aversion Distaste Unexplainable

Book:The Hidden Power of Kindness: A Practical Handbook for Souls who Dare to Transform the World, One Deed at a Time

Source: The Hidden Power of Kindness: A Practical Handbook for Souls who Dare to Transform the World, One Deed at a Time

“Everyone who comes within the reach of your knowledge is, as it were, on trial in your mind. It is easy to be an unjust, ignorant, and even a merciless judge. The real character of the actions of others depends in great measure on the motives that prompt them, and these motives are unknown to you.”

Mind Real Character Action Motivation Easy Judging Depends Trials Ignorant Motive Unjust Prompts Real Character

Book:The Hidden Power of Kindness: A Practical Handbook for Souls who Dare to Transform the World, One Deed at a Time

Source: The Hidden Power of Kindness: A Practical Handbook for Souls who Dare to Transform the World, One Deed at a Time

“Blaming society makes it awfully easy for a person of weak character to shrug off his own responsibility for his actions.”

Persons Character Action Easy Responsibility Weak Blame Weak Character

Author:Stanley Schmidt

“Until a character becomes a personality it cannot be believed. Without personality, the character may do funny or interesting things, but unless people are able to identify themselves with the character, its actions will seem unreal. And without personality, a story cannot ring true to the audience.”

People May Character Stories Seems Able Action Interesting Audience Personality Theatre Rings Animation Interesting Things Unreal

Author:Walt Disney

“In our animation we must show only the actions and reactions of a character, but we must picture also with the action. . . the feeling of those characters.”

Character Shows Feelings Action Reactions Animation Action And Reaction

Author:Walt Disney

“In most instances, the driving force behind the action is the mood, the personality, the attitude of the character - or all three. Therefore, the mind is the pilot. We think of things before the body does them.”

Thinking Life Mind Doe Character Body Action Three Force Behinds Attitude Greatness Personality Driving Mood Instance Pilots Driving Force

Author:Walt Disney

“France always has plenty men of talent, but it is always deficient in men of action and high character.”

Men Character Action Talent Plenty France

Author:Napoleon Bonaparte

“Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned-that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character-that your character, your actions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises held by your mind.”

Men Mind Character Facts Action Desire Values Emotion Creation Products Pride Achievement Highest Recognition Premises

Author:John Galt

“A little more grace, a motive made pure, a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened, a character subdued, a life consecrated, would restore the right action of the mental mechanism, and make manifest the movement of body and soul in accord with God.”

Heart Littles Made Soul Character Body Action Grace Movement Pure Motive Manifest Mechanism Accord Right Action

Book:The Christian Science Journal

Source: The Christian Science Journal

“The strength of the group is in the will of the leader, and the will is character in action.”

Character Action Leadership Leader Groups

Author:Vince Lombardi

“Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.”

Men Character Action Fall Business Responsibility Crisis Taking Responsibility Stamps Fall Back Personality Flaws

Author:Charles de Gaulle

“As a hero, you have to play it straight. The audience is going to live through you, so you have to be more neutral. They will be projecting their thoughts and their actions onto the main character.”

Play Character Action Audience Hero Main Characters

Author:Dolph Lundgren

“We cannot judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect accuracy from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters.”

Men May Real Character Feelings Action Perfect Half Judging Conversation Appearance Sentences Finished Probability Careless Accuracy Real Character Character Of A Man

Book:Castle Rackrent

Source: Castle Rackrent

“I always begin with a character or characters, and then try to think up as much action for them as possible.”

Thinking Trying Character Action

Author:John Irving

“Imitation is for the most part so unconscious that its effects are almost unheeded, but its influence is not the less permanent on that account. It is only when an impressive nature is placed in contact with an impressionable one that the alteration in the character becomes recognizable. Yet even the weakest natures exercise some influence upon those about them. The approximation of feeling, thought, and habit is constant, and the action of example unceasing.”

Character Feelings Action Influence Effects Example Habit Exercise Accounts Constant Contact Permanent Unconscious Imitation Impressive Alterations Approximation Impressionable

Book:Happy Homes and the Hearts that Make Them. Or Thrifty People and why They Thrive

Source: Happy Homes and the Hearts that Make Them. Or Thrifty People and why They Thrive

“I still have a hard time saying who Johnny [ Cash ] is in one sentence. He seemed so contradictory in his actions, and I think that's probably what is most fascinating about him and what made him such an interesting character to study.”

Thinking Made Stills Hard Character Action Interesting Study Sentences Hard Times Fascinating Cash Contradictory Interesting Characters One Sentence

Author:Joaquin Phoenix

“I look for characters that are fun and that I'm going to have fun playing. By the way, that's whether it's drama, sci-fi, action, comedy, family movies or action-comedy. I just always want to have fun doing it. That's the bottom line.”

Way Want Looks Character Action Fun Lines Comedy Drama Bottom Having Fun Sci Fi Bottom Line

Author:Dwayne Johnson

“It is quite impossible to understand the character of a person from one action, however striking that action may be.”

May Persons Character Action Impossible Character Of A Person

Book:Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd

Source: Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd

“Anything you put in a play -- any speech -- has got to do one of two things: either define character or push the action of the play along.”

Two Play Character Action Speech Two Things Playwriting

Author:Edward Albee

“The more uniform a man's voice, step, manner of conversation, handwriting--the more quiet, uniform, settled, his actions, his character.”

Men Character Action Voice Steps Quiet Conversation Uniforms Handwriting

Author:Johann Kaspar Lavater

“Reason ... contradicts the established order of men and things on behalf of existing societal forces that reveal the irrational character of this order for "rational" is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.”

Men Reason Character Action Order Force Ignorance Destruction Rational Oppression Irrational Behalf Brutality Thoughts And Actions

Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

Source: One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

“There are three types of actions : purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters , to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three.”

Character Action Three Type Habitual

Book:Nova

Source: Nova

“The "Lucifer Effect" describes the point in time when an ordinary, normal person first crosses the boundary between good and evil to engage in an evil action. It represents a transformation of human character that is significant in its consequences. Such transformations are more likely to occur in novel settings, in "total situations," where social situational forces are sufficiently powerful to overwhelm, or set aside temporally, personal attributes of morality, compassion, or sense of justice and fair play.”

“Invariably will you find perseverance exemplified as the radical principle in every truly great character. It facilitates, perfects, and consolidates the execution of the plan conceived, and renders profitable its results when attained. By continuing to advance steadily in the same way, light constantly increases, obstacles disappear, efficient habits are confirmed, experience is acquired, the use of the best means is reduced to easy action, and success becomes more sure.”

Source: Proverbs for the people: or, Illustrations of practical godliness drawn from the Book of wisdom

“Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.”

Feels Mean Littles Character Able Action Success Acting Encouragement Little Things

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Don't put anything into a story that does not reveal character or advance the action.”

Doe Character Stories Action

Author:Kurt Vonnegut

“To me, acting is a matter of absolute concentration. You can laugh and giggle with your friends up to the minute the director says, "Action!" Then you snap your mind into shape and into the character that you're playing and relate to the people that you're acting with and forget everybody else that you've been joking with.”

People Mind Matter Character Action Forget Acting Laughing Minutes Shapes Directors Absolutes Relate Concentration Snaps Giggle

Author:Elizabeth Taylor

“I never really thought of myself as being an action hero or a leading man, or any of that. I'm a character actor.”

Men Character Action Actors Hero Character Actors Action Heroes

Author:Aaron Paul

“I'd like to be the John Wayne of the '90s. Not in terms of being the macho guy, but as a solid male leading character. Making an action-adventure comedy that kids can see with their families is a natural extension of what I did in wrestling.”

Character Kids Action Guy Term Natural Comedy Adventure Males Wrestling Extensions Wayne Macho

Author:Hulk Hogan

“When I'm writing a script, I don't worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters - what they need, what they want, what they should do. That's what gets the story going. You can't just have action, you've got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere.”

People Knows Want Needs Should Writing Character Stories Action Grows Worry Scripts Plot Main Characters

Author:Mel Brooks

“Meditation may require a lifetime to master, but it will have been a lifetime well spent. ... If you want to judge your progress, ask yourself these questions: Am I more loving? Is my judgment sounder? Do I have more energy? Can my mind remain calm under provocation? Am I free from the conditioning of anger, fear, and greed? Spiritual awareness reveals itself as eloquently in character development and selfless action as in mystical states.”

“Heroism is no extempore work of transient impulse--a rocket rushing fretfully up to disturb the darkness by which, after a moment's insulting radiance, it is ruthlessly swallowed up,--but a steady fire, which darts forth tongues of flame. It is no sparkling epigram of action, but a luminous epic of character.”

Moments Character Action Darkness Fire Tongue Impulse Flames Steady Heroism Epic Rockets Insulting Rushing Luminous Transient Radiance Epigrams Sparkling Darts

Author:Edwin Percy Whipple

“For the man who makes everything that leads to happiness, or near to it, to depend upon himself, and not upon other men, on whose good or evil actions his own doings are compelled to hinge,--such a one, I say, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation; this is the man of manly character and of wisdom.”

Men Character Action Evil Plans He Man Depends Moderation Manhood Compelled Adopted Masculine Manly Hinges Doings Living Happily

Book:Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study

Source: Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study

“Do not forget that small daily actions do or undo character.”

Character Action Forget

Author:Oscar Wilde

“Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.”

Character Action Importance Trifles

Book:Essays on Men and Manners

Source: Essays on Men and Manners

“A farce is that in poetry which grotesque (caricature) is in painting. The persons and actions of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false, that is, inconsistent with the characters of mankind; and grotesque painting is the just resemblance of this.”

Persons Character Action Mankind Painting Manners Unnatural Inconsistent Resemblance Grotesque Caricatures Farce

Author:John Dryden

“Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the first half of a novel, the unpredictability should be the more striking. In the second half, the inevitability should be the more striking.”

Should Firsts Has Beens Character Action Half Novel Inevitable Unpredictable Inevitability Unpredictability

Book:Collected Impressions

Source: Collected Impressions

“I fancy the character of a poet is in every country the same,--fond of enjoying the present, careless of the future; his conversation that of a man of sense, his actions those of a fool.”

Men Country Character Action Enjoy Poet Fool Conversation Fancy Careless

Book:His Works

Source: His Works

“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.”

Heart Persons Long Stills Ends Character Action Justice Draws Strive Temporary Retreat Ungrateful Suffocating Heating Recoil Idolized

Book:The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller's Life and Writings

Source: The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller's Life and Writings