Quotes About Character

Testing of self is a regular part of our own lives, so it seems natural to make it a part of the lives of my characters, as well, albeit on a much different level.

But the person who scored well on an SAT will not necessarily be the best doctor or the best lawyer or the best businessman. These tests do not measure character, leadership, creativity, perseverance.

I love taking a character and raining holy hell down on them and seeing how they respond, how they react. It's one of the things I do in almost all my books - my protagonist is put through a very stressful situation that tests their strength and their psychological acuity. That's one of the core components of who I am as a writer.

The hard thing about 'The Saint' was that my character was supposed to die, but then they reshot the ending based on tests and she lives. I created the character based on her dying - she would never have been as innocent otherwise. So I didn't have high expectations for that film.

James couldn't help smiling: Bruce Clark was a shy eleven-year-old who wouldn't harm a fly. Bruce Norris was a campus karate champion who would probably enjoy harming the fly and then go after its brothers and sisters for the hell of it.

One does what one is; one becomes what one does.

Sooner or later, animals will let loose a human trait, as men sometimes behave like a beast.

In the ancient and medieval world, the exploration of physical influences among heavenly bodies, and between the heavenly bodies and objects on earth, was generally called 'astrology.' But we must not confuse this with the current socially acceptable form of bigotry that seems to entitle the human beings who believe in it to prejudge the character of others based solely on their dates of birth.

And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.

I like to comprehend more or less everything around me - apart from the creation of my music. It's an obsessive character trait that's getting worse. I don't switch the light on and off 15 times before I leave the room yet, but something's going wrong.

A nursery rhyme character...they don't like that term. They prefer "Preadolescent Poetic Personalities".

The Old Man just claimed that the stature of the man was measured by how much he could smile when fate was beating him over the head with a stick.

Any of us can achieve virtue, if by virtue we merely mean the avoidance of the vices that do not attract us.

Basil Donovan was drunk again.

What's personality anyway? A mask of emotions, superimposed on the body and the intellect.

Truth will lose its credit, if delivered by a person that has none.

Values define who we are, and if they change we will become something else," Peter Nordstrom wrote in the employee publication, Loop. He described practices as "ways of doing things" and "behaviors that express our values.

Someone once accused me of being like Eliot Ness. I sad no sir, I'm not E.N., but I can promise you that I'm not Al Capone!

He's a trump!" said Clifford, "and if he swears the world is as good and pure as his own heart, I'll swear he's right.

She acknowledged, for the first time in her life, the seriousness of her state and was determined to live rather than to act out her retreat from life. Beneath her character armor she had preserved a sense of integrity and honest feelings. Once she stopped withholding her thoughts and feelings, she was free to express her natural interest in life and in other people and became a significant contributor to the group.

I don't have a hostile disposition toward humankind per se. In fact, I feel quite warmly toward humankind. It's individual humans I have trouble with. I'm prone to a certain skepticism about people's motives and character, and this critical appraisal can harden into enduringly harsh judgment.

I remember scrutinizing his face. I remember drinking his face down to the last drop, trying to elucidate the character, the psychology of such an individual. And yet the only thing about him that has remained is my memory of his ugliness.

Allí, el personaje dice ay o empalidece. Como si estuviera dentro de un caleidoscopio y viera el ojo que lo mira. Colores que se ordenan en una geometría ajena a todo lo que tú estás dispuesto a aceptar como bueno.

I really admire a woman for her intelligence, her personality. Beauty is not enough.