Character quotes
14.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside character — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"How could politics be a science, if laws and forms of government had not a uniform influence upon society? Where would be the foundation of morals, if particular characters had no certain or determinate power to produce particular sentiments, and if these sentiments had no constant operation on actions?"
"The poetic beauty of Davy's mind never seems to have left him. To that circumstance I would ascribe the distinguishing feature in his character, and in his discoveries,-a vivid imagination sketching out new tracts in regions unexplored, for the judgement to select those leading to the recesses of abstract truth."
"'How the West was Won' was very hard, because it was a three cameras technique, meaning three cameras wide. Therefore I wasn't speaking to my fellow performer, I was speaking to a camera, or a line next to the camera. It was difficult to do, because its not real acting. I had to pretend that I was 'seeing' Agnes Moorhead or Jimmy Stewart or Carroll Baker. I wasn't, I was acting to a drawn line. It took me personally two years to make the film, because my character starts at age 16 and I end up being 92 years old in the film. By the end of that production, I was ready for a long nap."
"Grading creative writing is always an ethical dilemma. But what you brought up about grading personal stories versus the research paper is of course a truly volatile issue in teaching memoir or the personal essay, because there's no pretense that the narrator is a character."
"I fit into the quirky, character class type of actor."
"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."
"Il ne faut point donner d'esprit a' ses personnages; mais savoir les placer dans des circonstances qui leur en donnent. You should not give wit to your characters, but know instead how to put them in situations which will make them witty."
"I consider myself fortunate that I've been able to find a character that people have responded to."
"When I went to college, I lived on campus, and the guys I hung out with made the characters in Revenge of the Nerds look like the Rat Pack in 1962. I, myself made that kid Booger look like Remington Steele."
"We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. We cannot afford to use methods of which we will be ashamed when we look back, when we say, '...we shouldn't have done that.'"
"Character, I think, is the single most important thing in fiction. You might read a book once for its interesting plot—but not twice."
"Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades."
"Prayer is the supreme instance of the hidden character of the Christian life."
"I try not to be influenced when it comes to being creative, just in order to sustain my own voice and character. However, I do have many inspirations from the worlds of literature, music, comedy and film."
"Children have always responded to me because I have that cartoon-character look."
"Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I've written, are stories driven by characters."
"I love writing every song I can like a little mini movie. I like to have a character, or some characters, and really paint a picture with the song."
"I think the only reason I wanted to do modeling, really, was because I knew I wasn’t ready to act; I knew I didn’t have enough life experience, and I knew that doing photo shoots was a way of acting. Playing a character each shoot and being able to just emerge yourself in these awkward experiences - it was amazing."
"It's really important to me that the actors bring a lot of elements of the characters to the process so they own it, so it's personal to them, so it's not just me saying, "You stand here, you say this, you do this, you feel this." No, you bring it up from in here and then let's work with that."
"Something that can happen when you enter the world of being an actress is that people see you one way and have a really hard time using their imaginations to see you any other way. I would be completely satisfied if I could go the rest of my life without being super-huge and super pigeonholed - I would love to play different characters the rest of my life."
