Quotes About Traits

A good strategy to utilize is to see through the front they project. They inevitably try to cast a larger-than-life image, a mythic, intimidating quality; but in fact they are all too human, full of the same insecurities and weaknesses we all possess. Try to recognize these very human traits and demythologize them.

And at the root of this mental transformation are two simple biological traits—the visual and the social—that primitive humans leveraged into power.

Genes are rarely about inevitability, especially when it comes to humans, the brain, or behavior. They're about vulnerability, propensities, tendencies

As emphasized in the last chapter, epigenetic changes can be multi-generational.8 Dogma was that all the epigenetic marks (i.e., changes in the DNA or surrounding proteins) were erased in eggs and sperm. But it turns out that epigenetic marks can be passed on by both (e.g., make male mice diabetic, and they pass the trait to their offspring via epigenetic changes in sperm).

EVOLUTION RESTS ON three steps: (a) certain biological traits are inherited by genetic means; (b) mutations and gene recombination produce variation in those traits; (c) some of those variants confer more "fitness" than others. Given those conditions, over time the frequency of more "fit" gene variants increases in a population.

If genes strongly influence average levels of a trait, that trait is strongly inherited. If genes strongly influence the extent of variability around that average level, that trait has high heritability.

While average finger number is an inherited trait, the heritability of finger number is low—genes don't explain individual differences much.

If you are trying to write realistic fiction and you people it extensively with overdrawn characters, you're working against yourself. You can occasionally get away with filling books and stories with grotesques, but unless your name's Carson McCullers it gets tricky. A less obvious form of caricature consists of giving an otherwise ordinary character a trait or attribute or mannerism on which the reader may focus his attention.

The preceding collection of stories about Einstein the young boy demonstrates the remarkable extent to which his most characteristic personal traits were native rather than acquired.

Age hasn't matured you. It's made those traits that were ticks in the twenty-five-year-old into full-blown affectations in the thirty-eight-year-old.

What's bred in the bone is sure to come out in the flesh.

Despite lack of any training with a lightsaber, Finn was athletic and courageous. In tandem with such traits, the saber made him a formidable fighter.

If you want to stay young-looking, pick your parents very carefully.

Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

I've just got crap hair. Although I inherited a lot of stuff from my dad, including giant knees, I didn't get his good, thick hair. I got my mother's thin, wispy, non-event hair instead.

It's funny how much of who we are as babies is who we are as we get older.

Igal mehel on mõni hea omadus. Neid tuleb talle ainult näidata.

His genius was betrayed by lofty and indomitable traits of character which could not yield or compromise. And so his life was a tragedy of inconsequence.

They're funny people," Thomas Hudson said. "They're all brave and some of them are so damned admirable. Then they have mean ones like this.

Two percent of the population is sociopathic. They just don't feel the way you or I do about others. If you come in contact with fifty people in a day, one of them is a sociopath.

There are even genes that correlate with charisma. Some of them overcompensate for a lack of internal empathy. They make you feel like they care more than anyone else while you're nothing to them.

His unpunctuality was to be a lifelong trait; even as prime minister he would arrive late or with only minutes to spare for meetings with Cabinets and monarchs and for debates in Parliament. As his exasperated wife was to say, 'Winston always likes to give the train a sporting chance to get away.

On my mother's side, I'm English, so that's where the freckles come from. On my father's side, I'm German, and he has the fantastic olive hues... I was given mum's skin, whereas my brothers and sisters were given my dad's skin. I do tan up quite well, but it takes me a bit longer.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.