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Personalities Quotes

Browse 55 quotes about Personalities.

Personalities Quotes

“The reason as to why we are attracted to our opposites is because they are our salvation from the burden of being ourselves.”

“Every time they shared their talent, they discovered that one of them had a unique gift. Clio had always possessed a keen mind and an ability to remember and recite facts after hearing them only once, but after they performed that skit for Apollo and Hermes, Clio's powerful intelligence had amplified. Just as Thalia's ability to make people laugh and forget their troubles had intensified so much that it cleared the clouds away and brought in sunshine.”

“Ever since she was a young girl, [Patricia Highsmith] had felt an extraordinary empathy for animals, particularly cats. The creatures, she said, 'provide something for writers that humans cannot: companionship that makes no demands or intrusions, that is as restful and ever-changing as a tranquil sea that barely moves'. Her affection for cats was 'a constant as was feline companionship wherever her domestic situation permitted,' says Kingsley. 'As for animals in general, she saw them as individual personalities often better behaved, and endowed with more dignity and honesty than humans. Cruelty to or neglect of any helpless living creature could turn her incandescent with rage.' Janice Robertson remembers how [...] Highsmith was walking through the streets of Soho when she saw a wounded pigeon lying in the gutter. 'Pat decided there and then that this pigeon should be rescued,' says Janice. 'Although I think Roland persuaded her that it was past saving, she really was distraught. She couldn't bear to see animals hurt.' Bruno Sager, Highsmith's carer at the end of her life, recalls the delicacy with which the writer would take hold of a spider which had crawled into the house, making sure to deposit it safely in her garden. 'For her human beings were strange - she thought she would never understand them - and perhaps that is why she liked cats and snails so much,' he says.”

“It needs to be emphasized, however, that the ability of fantasy to achieve a sense of reality is not an indication that the traumatic abuses recalled by patients with multiple personality disorder are fabricated or made-up. What is important to recognize is that the fantasy elaborations that are connected with dissociated states in these patients are efforts at restitution and represent attempts at mastering traumatic experiences through the use of imaginative solutions. This paper is examining the use of fantasy as it participates in the formation of the clinical picture of multiple personality disorder and is not intending to cast doubt on its traumatic origin.”

“No sugared association is stronger than that between sweetness and femininity. Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Women are honey, sweetheart, cupcake, candy girl, honey-bunch--- or they're tarts. In the Bible, "The lips of an adulterous woman drip honey" (Proverbs 5:3). Meanwhile, black women have been "caramel," "brown sugar," "mocha latte," "chocolate," and "molasses,"--- both desired and diminished. Making sweet foods is considered women's work--- and eating them is too. Girls receive an Easy-Bake Oven; cake mixes are marketed exclusively to women; home bakers are overwhelmingly female. Candy and chocolate are heavily feminized that a Yorkie bar in the U.K.--- normal chocolate, massive chunks--- until recently stood out by marketing itself as "not for girls." It's not just in American and European food cultures that this holds true. I spoke to food writer and journalist Mayukh Sen about the gendering of foods within Bengali cuisine. "Sweetness is very much gendered female in Bengali cooking," he explained. "There's a word, mishti, that stands for both Bengali sweets and is also used to describe someone, usually a woman, who is 'sweet' (pleasant, youthful, and nonthreatening/demure)." In Japan, amato and karato refer to those who love sweets and those who prefer salty, savory, and spicy foods, respectively, and yet these labels loosely trace the dividing line between men and women. Jon D. Holtzman writes that a Kyoto-based confectioner--- by all accounts a man who loved his sweets--- assured him that he was more a karato kind of guy: "strong, energetic, and ambitious.”

“Cities were always like people, showing their varying personalities to the traveler. Depending on the city and on the traveler, there might begin a mutual love, or dislike, friendship, or enmity. Where one city will rise a certain individual to glory, it will destroy another who is not suited to its personality. Only through travel can we know where we belong or not, where we are loved and where we are rejected.”

“There’s no such thing as a good or bad person: there are just people who have each been or seem to have been good or bad to you, someone, or some people, thus far.”

“I'm just saying that people are complicated. Nemo was a different man by the time Harding and Pencroft met him: older, bitter, disillusioned. That's why he wanted his technology hidden away and guarded. HP was motivated by Nemo's caution - paranoia, even. So you've got two completely different schools, Land Institute and Harding-Pencroft, inspired by different sides of the same person.”

“Show business and politics, being run by practical, cigar-smoking businessmen, manufacture personalities on an assembly line. Baseball, fighting for its life, has been stifling them as fast as they appear. What makes it so sad is that the athlete has a role in our society that reaches even beyond showmanship. The athlete is one of the last symbols of that superfluity of our society, the physical man. The average man finds that although the instincts of his primitive forebears may beat a tomtom in his blood, his own daily conflict has been reduced to the drive downtown, the paper work in the office, the return trip. The conflict is undefined, the enemy is indistinct, the battle remains permanently unsettled. He doesn't really know whether he has won or lost; there is only the vague feeling that he is somehow losing.”

“You know who you are and what you are capable of, because of your own personal history and the experiences you gained throughout that history.”

“I am always being asked: ‘What are the Beatles really like?’ I never know quite what to say because they are what they are and anyone who has ever seen or heard them either in person, or on radio or screen has, basically, as much chance as I have of knowing what they are like. I believe and I must say it, that they are quite magnificent human beings, utterly honest, often irritating but splendid citizens shining in a very ordinary, not very pleasing world.”

“Some people are like gravity; they draw you into a room with a hop in your step and a smile on your face. Others are like the stench of sulfur; they make you scowl and want to swivel on the balls of your feet towards a quick exit. Have you stopped to think if you are gravity or sulfur?”

“For whatever reason, there are people we like and people we don't like. It's hard to say why, and often a difficult opinion to change. Luckily, there's no steadfast rule stating that we must like everyone. But to keep from disliking ourselves, we should develop the good character to treat everyone kindly whether or not we deem them deserving.”

“They all call me "Excuse me," even though my nametag clearly says "Jordan." It's like people don't actually exist while they're working. Workers are just tools who aren't supposed to have feelings or personalities. You don't become human until your shift is over. Until then, we're all just zombies. We're dead to the world: infected people who need to be avoided, unless, of course, someone needs to know where the paintbrushes are located.”

“She didn't look up, her gaze focused entirely on the paper before her as she drew what looked like a wing. He picked up one of the papers from the floor, and on it was a butterfly, the colors a blending of vibrant yellows and oranges. He held out the paper. "What's this one called?" "Golden Shimmer," she said. "She loves the sunlight." He picked up a picture of a light-purple butterfly with a string of pearls around her neck. "And this one?" "Lavender Lace. She has the power to heal all sorts of wounds." He scanned the room, all the pictures on the floor. "Do they each have a name?" Finally she looked at him, her bright-blue eyes meeting his. "Of course." And he realized with a pang of sadness that these were Libby's friends for life. "They are beautiful." A glint of a smile. "Thank you." He picked up another butterfly, this one a dark violet shade, a silver streak bleeding across the edge of its wings. "What is she called?" "Silver Shadow." "Does she have a story?" Libby's smile faded. "She's lost and can't seem to find her way home.”

“Aurora Rose looked back and forth among the three women, gladly distracted from the sad events by the puzzle before her. The fairies in real life had their own personalities, of course, despite their superficial similarities as ageless, chatty, loving aunt figures. Flora tended to try to lead and make decisions for them. Merryweather seemed to understand the basic workings of the world better, although she rarely acted on this knowledge and instead chose to comment snarkily on it. Sometimes she got sneaky and went behind Flora's back. Fauna was the one who hugged the princess the most and often acted as an intermediary between the other two. The green one, "Fauna," seemed more concerned with how Aurora Rose was feeling- how 'everyone' was feeling. She was the one who had been waiting outside the cottage for the prince and princess. Like she was the one who 'cared.' And the blue one- "Merryweather"- seemed 'incredibly' quick-minded and brilliant. And even snarkier. "Flora" was brave and powerful and ready to plunge into any physical combat. And not for nothing, she was built like a gladiator. They were 'all' acting like extreme versions of their real selves.”

“The clothes you're wearing, the room, the house, the city that you're in. Everything in it started out in the human imagination. Your lives, your personalities, your whole world. All invented. All made up. All the wars, the romances. The masterpieces and the machines. And there's nothing here but a funny little twist of amino acids, playing a marvelous game of pretend.”

“As Mollie said to Dailey in the 1890s: "I am told that there are five other Mollie Fanchers, who together, make the whole of the one Mollie Fancher, known to the world; who they are and what they are I cannot tell or explain, I can only conjecture." Dailey described five distinct Mollies, each with a different name, each of whom he met (as did Aunt Susan and a family friend, George Sargent). According to Susan Crosby, the first additional personality appeared some three years after the after the nine-year trance, or around 1878. The dominant Mollie, the one who functioned most of the time and was known to everyone as Mollie Fancher, was designated Sunbeam (the names were devised by Sargent, as he met each of the personalities). The four other personalities came out only at night, after eleven, when Mollie would have her usual spasm and trance. The first to appear was always Idol, who shared Sunbeam's memories of childhood and adolescence but had no memory of the horsecar accident. Idol was very jealous of Sunbeam's accomplishments, and would sometimes unravel her embroidery or hide her work. Idol and Sunbeam wrote with different handwriting, and at times penned letters to each other. The next personality Sargent named Rosebud: "It was the sweetest little child's face," he described, "the voice and accent that of a little child." Rosebud said she was seven years old, and had Mollie's memories of early childhood: her first teacher's name, the streets on which she had lived, children's songs. She wrote with a child's handwriting, upper- and lowercase letters mixed. When Dailey questioned Rosebud about her mother, she answered that she was sick and had gone away, and that she did not know when she would be coming back. As to where she lived, she answered "Fulton Street," where the Fanchers had lived before moving to Gates Avenue. Pearl, the fourth personality, was evidently in her late teens. Sargent described her as very spiritual, sweet in expression, cultured and agreeable: "She remembers Professor West [principal of Brooklyn Heights Seminary], and her school days and friends up to about the sixteenth year in the life of Mollie Fancher. She pronounces her words with an accent peculiar to young ladies of about 1865." Ruby, the last Mollie, was vivacious, humorous, bright, witty. "She does everything with a dash," said Sargent. "What mystifies me about 'Ruby,' and distinguishes her from the others, is that she does not, in her conversations with me, go much into the life of Mollie Fancher. She has the air of knowing a good deal more than she tells.”

“Weird? Absurd? That’s how it seemed to me. I had these forces, these compunctions, these alternative personalities inside me, driving me. It was like being a jack-in-the-box and I was unsure which personality was going to jump out next: Billy, who thought of himself as a cowboy or a terrorist; Kato the cutter; anorexic Shirley, whose only self-indulgence was binge drinking and the occasional salad sandwich. I didn’t dislike Shirley. I was afraid of her. Shirley knew things I didn’t.”

“When she notices my silence she goes quiet and sighs. I guess she, too, gets fed up with the weight of incomprehension. I guess that on top of seeming like a sister who is detached, dejected and discourteous, I also come off as an arrogant person. Kinship isn't enough for her, either, of course it isn't. In cases like ours, getting along isn't a question of magic or chemistry or affinity, but of tenacity, toughness and torturous toiling.”

“One advantage of being in a long-term relationship with someone whom exhibits a strong personality is that when caught in the conduit of their force field, the resultant propulsion propels us to see both them as well as oneself in clearer light, thereby, opening a person’s eyes for constructive personal change.”

“By the time Cheryl Hersha came to the facility, knowledge of multiple personality was so complete that doctors understood how the mind separated into distinct ego states, each unaware of the other. First, the person traumatized had to be both extremely intelligent and under the age of seven, two conditions not yet understood though remaining consistent as factors. The trauma was almost always of a sexual nature… (p52)”

“There is nothing better in life than commitment to personal development and lifelong learning.”

“I'm not saying that I think one man is better than the other. I'm not saying that either is kinder or wiser or more ambitious, more thoughtful, confident, or able. But the fact is that when I'm with the one, comfort settles into my bones. I feel calm around him, as if the sun is smiling down on me and the world has suddenly become a sweet, safe place to be. I feel good about life―about myself. And it's hard not to want to be near someone who, just by their very nature, makes you feel that way.”

“People are like water: Many rush pass you, as some will over-flood. Some will drown you, or force you to go their current ways. Some will be cold or hot-tempered, but try to say with the warm ones. Some will come as a raging wave and cause a ripple, or a calm sea, supporting you, quenching your thirst, and flow by your side to where kisses will always stay wet.”