Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.
Men best show their character in trifles, where they are not on their guard. It is in the simplest habits, that we often see the boundless egotism which pays no regard to the feelings of others and denies nothing to itself.
All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital , and allowed to live only so far as the interest to the ruling class requires it.
The more deeply connected you are with the people that you're working with, the better the work and the character, and then, I think, that really translates to life. It will help you in life to be more grounded and genuine.
Every character that I play, even if it's a homemaker, there is an inherent, innate strength in her - you can find strength in every facet of a female personality. It doesn't just come from the physical strength of a woman.
Children tend to be rather better observers of adults' characters than adults are of children's, because children are so dependent on adults that it is very much in their interest to discover the weaknesses of their elders.
With fiction, you can talk about plot, character and narrative, whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language. And this is daunting stuff to deal with.
As I got further into my career, as a character of color, if I was going to have the types of opportunities I felt I deserved, and continue to have them, I was going to have to start creating those opportunities for myself.
At the end of the day, if I can say that I had a career where I was able to play all different kinds of characters and I'm known as someone who is well-respected for my approach to the craft, that would be a beautiful life.
There's something special about racing in real streets. The 'artificial' circuits have a certain sameness to them. But every race conducted on real streets has a character of its own - Barcelona, Monaco, and now Long Beach.
The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.
Here was St. Augustine, the oldest city in the United States. How to build a hotel to meet the requirements of nineteenth century America and have it in keeping with the character of the place ? that was my hardest problem.
[John] Adams never had an optimistic view of human nature, and his experience in the Congress and abroad only deepened his suspicion that his fellow Americans might not have the character to sustain a republican government.
The great ones in life are not those who are handed silver spoons. Their excellence comes from digging into the raw ore of their own character, through hard work, persistence and faith turning whatever they touch into gold.
Whether it is the cavemen in the caves thousands of years ago, Shakespeare plays, television, movies and books, stories and characters take us on a journey. All I do is tell those stories without scripts and without actors.
I heard the opening bar of 'Help' as I headed down Polk Street. Every single time I've heard that tune I've taken it as some message from God, a warning of things to come, a perfect description of my mashed-potato character
I love wearing the exact same thing all the time because I think it makes you like a cartoon character. They always wear the same outfit and everybody always remembers them for it, so I feel like I should do the same thing.
My intention is always to honor the character that Lev [Grossman] created in the books and my greatest concern, honestly, is that the fans of the books will embrace me as this character that they've imagined in their heads.
I was thinking about the difference in voice between the different characters. Each voice has to be unique. Hypothetically you should be able to read each chapter without the heading that tells you who is telling the story.
The inspiration really comes first from the character and the story. That vision of what the story is, and what the character is, the world that they inhabit and what the story wants to tell. That's really what inspires me.
So I’m thinking this is the part of my movie where things appear as if nothing is going to work out. I have to remind myself that all movie characters go through this sort of dark period before they find their happy ending.
The truth is these characters [of Batman story] evolve, and there's a lot of hands in the supporting of these characters. It's great when everybody can know where everything came from. It's important for the legacy of them.
The work evolves when you get another part, and then you're getting called on to solve difficult characters, to inject a note of humanity into them. It's more interesting for me to do that than to stand around and be sunny.
My natural tendency is to fall in love with language and character and setting, and kind of forget about pacing. Narrative tension doesn't come naturally to me, and if it does feel fast-paced that makes me incredibly happy.
When I find the character, I try to spend time with them and get to know them very well. Therefore my notes are not from the character that I had in my mind before, but are instead based on the people I've met in real life.
Thinking is the place where intelligent actions begin. We pause long enough to look more carefully at a situation, to see more of its character, to think about why it's happening, to notice how it's affecting us and others.
If the Church is 'in Christ,' she is involved in mission. Her whole existence then has a missionary character. Her conduct as well as her words will convince the unbelievers and put their ignorance and stupidity to silence.
The person you are (in total, at that moment in time) is what creates the story you're writing. It's infused in every piece of punctuation, in the plot, in the most minor character who crosses the page. It's all your voice.
That is the beauty of having characters that don't make a big deal out of being gay, or lesbian, or whatever. They are just what they are, and that is acceptable - and that nobody should question that and that love is love.
It is the duty of men to judge men only by their actions. Our faculties furnish us with no means of arriving at the motive, the character, the secret self. We call the tree good from its fruits, and the man, from his works.
I do believe, and I will always believe, that Shakespeare on film is really something that should be tried more often because it is an opportunity to take the humanity that Shakespeare writes into characters and express it.
It is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day.
I think you always want to be open to things... it's just the matter of finding something I believe in, finding a character I believe in, and I think that's the way it should always be. I'm looking for things that excite me.
Making movies can actually be quite boring, there's a lot of sitting around and waiting. Unless you really believe in the story and love the character, and unless you really need the money, I don't see the point in doing it.
For me, the beauty of a person is a matter of the whole package. You have to look at the whole thing, not just a matter of outward appearance or whatever. It has to do with one's character, personality, upbringing and so on.
Imagination helps me to become part of that journey that I'm going through in font of the camera, or in front of an audience. I used to think you had to disappear within a character, but I find that puts a mask on what I do.
A character has a distinctive voice - you should be able to hear them in your head and conduct a conversation with them while you're out walking. If the answers surprise you, you know it's the character speaking and not you.
I want people to feel conflicted. I want them to feel for characters they started out hating. I want to start conversations about what it means to be a parent. About the responsibility we bear to ourselves and to each other.
Secular writers can tell a story about the physical, the emotional, and the intellectual parts of a character. But no matter how well they tell the story, they miss a facet that is innately part of all of us - the spiritual.
I love my job, I love being an actor and stepping into the shoes of different characters and exploring their lives. It's enriched my life extremely. I've learned more about myself and the ways of life through being an actor.
Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character.
It's very much a character-based play. Conor's writing is almost musical and paints pictures at the same time. It's a joy as an actor to be able to say the words. It's very conversational but at the same time, tells a story.
Woody Allen - nobody has been a better joke teller than him - and even in his great films, it's always coming out of the character. If you don't have that, jokes are just empty and I think that people rely too much on jokes.
The life of Abraham Lincoln is by most accounts an amazing study in character formation. Yet he was notoriously disorganized; he even had a file in his law office labeled If you can't find it anywhere else, try looking here.
We have to say now we think the character of the party has changed so far it will take something very exceptional, something really out of the ordinary line to make us be convinced there's a chance of winning back the party.
I need people to put a character in my hands and trust me to bring it to life and do it justice. So, I'm extremely grateful to have been given that opportunities and incredibly excited to be given more of them in the future.
I'm much more interested in developing human character in society. And I'm much more interested in the social conditions that foster commitment to ideals, a sense of solidarity, purposefulness, steadfastness, responsibility.
Every country should realize that its turn at world domination, domination because its rights coincided more or less with the character or progress of the epoch, must terminate with the change brought about by this progress.
My character is somebody who is smaller in stature and yet who's strong, so to see the fighting situations between people who are not generally thought of being strong is in itself unusual and therefore interesting, I think.
I love rehearsals and I love creating a character, sticking with it until you have something to tell. It's always different though. Sometimes a director will tell you from day one what they want. Then you throw in your idea.