Character quotes

Character

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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Character quotes (page 152 of 739)

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Henry David Thoreau Writer, Philosopher
Character

"The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the next day to disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust, in an ever-shabby coat, though finer than the farmer's best, yet never dressed.... He especially is the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly loves the social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him."

Years Character Next Day
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Henry Ford Industrialist
Character

"I am in exact accord with the belief of Thomas Edison that spirit is immortal, that there is a continuing center of character in each personality. But I don't know what spirit is, nor matter either. I suspect they are forms of the same thing. I never could see anything in this reputed antagonism between spirit and matter. To me this is the most beautiful, the most satisfactory from a scientific standpoint, the most logical theory of life."

Character Beautiful Personality
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Fred Thompson Politician
Character

"Because John McCain stood up, our country is better off. The respect he is given around the world is not because of a teleprompter speech designed to appeal to American critics abroad but because of decades of clearly demonstrated character and statesmanship."

World Country Character
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Fred Thompson Politician
Character

"Now, being a POW certainly doesn't qualify anyone to be president. But it does reveal character. This is the kind of character that civilizations from the beginning of history have sought in their leaders."

Character Leader Civilization
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Norman Buckley Television Director
Character

"None of the male characters are as powerful or as interesting as the four central female characters. The men work best as representations of the current stage of a particular female’s psyche. The men function as catalysts, and are certainly important to the development of the story, but the relationships are not the goal. I do not see romance as being what’s central to the success of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS."

Character Powerful Liars
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Kenny Smith Basketball Player
Character

"Misfortune occurs or can occur to anyone, of any sort of character. The eudaimonic has more resources to avoid it (being in autonomous control of his appetites and assumptions) and more resources to deal with it if it occurs (being better able to put it in perspective and maintain his own evenness of self-mastery). Tragedy as a dramatic form is meant to foster the ethos of sophrosyne or moderation, "nothing to excess"; it nurtures a sense of distance from the dominant illusions and delusions that may infect even aristoi."

Character Philosophy Distance
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Kenny Smith Basketball Player
Character

"(The terms douloi, banausoi and aristoi) are in a way more precise, but what is more vital and valuable, they are more comprehensive: they project a concept of psychic order that embraces entire fields that we have no other way of seeing all together as the working of a single principle. If we think of the human domain as the collaboration and the conflict of these three diverse character-types, we can understand the weave and the stress and polemics of their very different basal teleologies or ultimate governing purposes of life."

Character Philosophy Stress
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Keri Russell Actress
Character

"I think it's quite common and realistic. There are many stories like this [in Waitress]. [Jenna, my character] marriage looks really horrible up on the screen but I think there are a lot of people in bad relationships who wake up and think to themselves: "Wow, how did I end up here? Why am I still here and so unhappy and not satisfied with my life?""

Thinking Character Bad Relationship
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Character

"I'm doing this play right now, the new David Mamet play. It's called 'Race,' and it's very interesting how people really leave the theater filled with the desire to talk about the play and the issues and the characters, and how they're all navigating their personal views around race."

Character Play Views
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Henry James Author
Character

"The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality."

Character Reality Color
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Henry James Author
Character

"She had her own way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest description of a character which, although by no means without liberal motions, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity."

Mean Giving Character
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