Quotes About Character

i want to be friends with people who are honest and interesting, generous but not ridiculous, thoughtful but who don't have irritating voices

People aren't either wicked or noble," the hook-handed man said. "They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.

Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness.

People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit. —Aristotle

He had a long thin nose, a moustache like flock wallpaper, sparse, carefully combed hair, and the complexion of a Hovis loaf.

Then I carefully dipped my brush and wrote the characters for family, country, and book. When the examiner smiled, I knew he liked my work, so I decided to write the hardest character I knew, which was the one for virtue. It took fifteen strokes.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

A tradition is entrusted to human personalities which it reflects. What a man recalls as a word or an experience of the master is, even against his will and without his knowledge, colored by his own personality and character, by the littleness and the greatness in him, by his hopes, his longing, and his faith.

Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.

Someone has said that even the worst sinner spends more time doing things that are good and harmless than in doing things that are bad. In other words, there is some good even in the worst of us.

The sense of differentiation is so acute in Yiddish that a word like, say, paskudnyak has no peer in any language I know for the vocal delineation of a nasty character. And Yiddish coins new names with ease for new personality types: a nudnik is a pest; a phudnik is a nudnik with a Ph.D.

PROVERB: "A tavern can't corrupt a good man, and a synagogue can't reform a bad one.

I think of a shmegegge as a cross between a shlimazl and a shlemiel—or even between a nudnik and a nebekh.

Jaschwin, ein Spieler und ein Trunkenbold, ein völlig grundsatzloser Mensch ohne Moral, war im Regiment Wronskijs bester Freund. Er mochte ihn wegen seiner unwahrscheinlichen körperlichen Konstitution, die sich hauptsächlich darin ausdrückte, daß er wie ein bodenloses Fass saufen und auf Schlaf verzichten konnte, ohne daß man ihm nur das geringste anmerkte.

Wir werden nicht geliebt, weil wir so gut sind, sondern weil diejenigen, die uns lieben gut sind.

Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

I can't praise a young lady who is alive only when people are admiring her, but as soon as she is left alone, collapses and finds nothing to her taste--one who is all for show and has no resources in herself

Every human being . . . illustrates with their lives how he or she thinks a human being is supposed to live.

When our characters show us the full fire of that inner battle, we have the makings of great fiction. For whether the choice is ultimately for honor or dishonor, we will see the consequences and the reader will be instructed without being taught.

A quirky, colorful character overstays her welcome after a few chapters, unless trouble comes calling.

You don't always have to render the feelings of your characters, but you must know what they are in every scene. That way, the actions and dialogue will have an organic complexity that breathes life into fiction.

The Care Package is a relationship the Lead has with someone else, in which he shows his concern, through word or deed, for that character's well being.