character quotes
You have been acquitted bya Limerick jury, and you may now leave the dock without any other stain upon your character.
As the character is, such is the speech.
She had a womanly instinct that clothes possess an influence more powerful over many than the worth of character or the magic of manners.
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.
We loved your play.We only have problems with your main character, the second act and the ending.
Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying ina meanit is a mean between twovices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.
To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, neverapathetic, neverattitudinizinghere isperfection of character.
Idonot know whether itoughttobe so, butcertainlysilly things do cease to be silly if theyare done by sensible people in an impudent way.Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly. It depends upon the character of those who handle it.
Sports do not build character. They reveal it.
I remember a table in BarchesterTowers that had more character than the combined heroes of three recent novels I've read.
Byour skill in Mechanism, it has cometo pass, that in the management of external things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure mortal nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.
I should like to see the custom introduced of readers who are pleased with a book sending the author some small cash token Not more than a hundred poundsthat would be bad for my characternot less than half a crownthat would do no good to yours.
The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.
His moral characterwas full of promise, but of no performance.
L'homme est ne pour la socie te ; se parez-le, isolez-le, ses ide es se de suniront, son caracte' re se tournera, mille affections ridicules s'e le' veront dans son coeur; des 274 pense es extravagantes germeront dans son esprit, comme les ronces dans une terre sauvage. Man is born to live in society: separate him, isolate him, and his ideas disintegrate, his character changes, a thousand ridiculous affectations rise up in his heart; extreme thoughts take hold in his mind, like the brambles in a wild field.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds; and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitute a man's critical actions, it will be better not to thinkourselves wise about his character.
'Character'says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms,'character is destiny.'
I have but one request to make at my departure from this world, it isthe charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives, dare now vindicate them, let no prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and peace! Let my memory be left in oblivion, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justicetomycharacter.Whenmycountry takesher place among thenations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.
I hope I will be religious again but as for reganing my charecter I despare for it.
Ulyssesis a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.
Being another character is more interesting than being yourself.
I play the sort of character who would sell his grandmother for career advancement, something I've come across a lot with actors.
Mr Kemblesacrificestoomuchto decorum.He ischiefly afraid of being contaminated by too close an identity with the character herepresents.This isthegreatest vice in an actor, who ought never to bilk his part.
TheTimes is, we suppose, entitled to the character it gives of itself, of being the'leading journal of Europe', and is perhaps the greatest engine of temporary opinion in the world.
Paris is a beast of a city to be into those who cannot getoutof it.Rousseausaidwell, that allthetimehewasin it, he was only trying how he should leave it The continual panic inwhichthe passenger iskept, thealarm and the escape from it, the anger and the laughter at it, must haveaneffectonthe Parisian character, and tend to make it the whiffling, skittish, snappish, volatile, inconsequential, unmeaning thing it is.
We must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it much.
A nation's art isgreatest when it most reflects the character of its people.
What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind.
The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness.
I have a dream. I have a dream that my four little children will oneday liveinanationwherethey will not bejudged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
You mustn't look inmy novel for the old stable ego of the character.
When you meet Mr. Smith first you think he looks like an over-dressed pirate. Then you begin to think him a character.You wonder at his enormous bulk. Then the utter hopelessness of knowing what Smith is thinking by merely looking at his features gets on your mind and makes the Mona Lisa seem an open book and the ordinary human countenance as superficial as a puddle in the sunlight.
If we have violated any law, it was not done intentionally. We have injured no man's reputation, character, person, or property.We were meeting together to preserve ourselves, our wives, and our children from utter degradation and starvation.
We hardly know any instance of the strength and weakness of humannaturesostriking, and sogrotesque, as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stockinghalf Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison inone pocket, and a quire of bad verses in the other.
The American character looks always as if it just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.
Affairs of the world he could treat competently; he had a head for high politics and the management of men; the femininehalfoftheworldwasa confusionandavexation to his intelligence, characterless; and one woman at last appearing decipherable, he fancied it must be owing to her possession of character, a thing prized the more in women because of his latent doubt of its existence.
It may be asserted without scruple, that no otherclass of dependants have had their character so entirely distorted from its natural proportions by their relations with their masters.
And what I've learned isnot to believe in magical leaders any more; that character and compassion are more important than ideology; and that even if it's absurd to think you can change things, it's even more absurd to think that it's foolish and unimportant to try.
Eins ist not.Seinem Charakter 'Stil geben'. One thing is needful.To'give style'to one's character. «
Ein Charakter ist ein vollkommen gebildeter Willen. A character is a perfectly cultivated will.
Name me one character in literature or drama who can't be described as neurotic We wouldn't want to know the people we get to see on the stage. How would you like to have Medea for dinner? Or Macbeth slurping your soup? Or Oedipus with his bloody, blinded eyes dripping all over your tablecloth?
We must recollectwhat it is we have at stake, what it is we have to contend for. It is for our property, it is for our liberty, it is for our independence, nay for our existence as a nation; it is for our character, it is for our very name as Englishmen, it is for everything dear and valuable to man on this side of the grave.
Most women have no characters at all.
If there be no nobility of descent in a nation, it is all the more indispensable that there should be nobility of ascent; a character in them that bear rule, so fine and high and pure, that as men come within the circle of its influence, they involuntarily pay homagetothat which is the one pre-eminent distinctionthe royalty of virtue.
It doesn't helpwhen primetimeTV has a character bearing a child alonejust another lifestyle choice. See Bentsen 78:84.
I can tell a lot about a fellow's character by the way that he eats jelly beans.
Le lecteur, lui non plus, ne voit pas les choses du dehors. Il est dans le labyrinthe aussi. The reader [as well as the main character] does not view the work from outside. He too is in the labyrinth.
One of the virtues, perhaps almost the chief virtue, of a newspaper is its independence.Whatever its position or character, at least it should have a soul of its own.
If there is anything I hate in a woman, it's want of character.
I am proud of your contempt for my character and opinions, sir.
Have you ever met a man of good character where women are concerned?
I'm called away by particular business. But I leave my character behind me.
I'm lying in bed counting sheep when all of a sudden it hits mea character like Samson, Hercules and all the strong men I heard tell of rolled into one.Only more so.
The greatest deliberative body in the worldhas too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity.
What is the character of a family to an hypothesis? my father would reply.
If a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relation to do the business.
I have been told, both in approval and accusation, that I seemto loveall mycharacters.What Idoinwriting of any character istotry toenter intothemind, heart and skinof a human being who is not myself.Whether this happens to be a man ora woman, old or young, with skin blackor white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set most high.
Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself.
I believe that all novelsdeal with character, and that it is to express characternot to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved.
Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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