Character Quotes

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.

~ Sam Ewing

Nature is at work. Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives us love and hate, jealousy and reverence. All that is ours is the power to choose which impulse we shall follow.

~ David Seabury

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

~ Salvador Dalí

A guy's who has all the money he needs and never faced any hard times, he won't have any character. But when you've had it tough and you've had it rough and you thought you were at the end of the rope and you work your way out of it, that's the way you build character.

~ Bobby Bowden

There's more pressure to be famous for being yourself than if you're being a character.

~ Kim Kardashian

When I was starting out, I thought I would go into comedy and there would be a mentor, like the Philip Seymour Hoffman character in 'Almost Famous,' in my life, and there just wasn't. It was really frustrating for me because I desired that so much.

~ Mike Birbiglia

With high fashion, it's a performance. You're trying to interpret a fantasy in a very physical way, and you really are playing a character. I've played men, dead people, famous people, historical icons, and it's no mean feat. It's quite an insular experience even though the crowd is in front of you and there's an expectation.

~ Erin O'connor

My goal was just to work regularly. I didn't ever expect to be rich or famous. I wanted to be a working character actor.

~ Harrison Ford

In 'A Few Best Men,' I play a lesbian character. I played the lesbian sister of the bride who ends up kissing a dude at the end, but she was, like, a full-on lesbian in that. And I beat out famous Australian lesbians for the role.

~ Rebel Wilson

I wasn't a kid who moved out from Iowa with aspirations of becoming a famous star - I was intrigued by the idea of filmmaking and by the idea of what it would be like to play a character in a movie.

~ Jason Lee

None of us is responsible for the complexion of his skin. This fact of nature offers no clue to the character or quality of the person underneath.

~ Marian Anderson

Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

~ Albert Einstein

Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.

~ John Polkinghorne

I'm crazy about Grant: his character, his nature, his science in fighting and everything else. But I don't like the idea that he never accepted the blame for anything, always found someone else to blame for any mistake that was ever made, including blaming Prentiss for Shiloh.

~ Shelby Foote

My own writing has perhaps more of an American flavor than a British one, but that's because the stories I've so far written have needed it. 'Empire State,' 'Seven Wonders' and 'The Age Atomic' are all very place-centric, where the setting itself is almost a character. But there is a universality to story that isn't just limited to science fiction.

~ Adam Christopher

The duties of a teacher are neither few nor small, but they elevate the mind and give energy to the character.

~ Dorothea Dix

I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, told us. When you create a character, it's like making a chair, except instead of making someting out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft - using yourself to create a character.

~ Robert Duvall

'Friends With Benefits': it feels like a two-hander to me, but it is a big movie, and this is the first straightforward male I've been able to play. I would describe my character in 'The Social Network' as a kind of sociopath. I would describe my character in 'Bad Teacher' as... just a weirdo. But this is a male's male.

~ Justin Timberlake

I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher, and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character.

~ Vin Diesel

When I was in college, I had the good fortune to have Joyce Carol Oates as my writing teacher. She told me that I could take an aspect of myself, and from that one bit of personality, I can create a character. This is what I have done, particularly in my novels.

~ Jonathan Ames

Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.

~ Walter Anderson

The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

~ Albert Schweitzer

I like taking a character at the most intense moments of their lives and exploring all that in full and then moving on.

~ Greg Iles

The day a character becomes predictable is the day a writer should think about moving on - because the reader certainly will.

~ Mark Billingham

The resistance that you fight physically in the gym and the resistance that you fight in life can only build a strong character.

~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

Our ability to handle life's challenges is a measure of our strength of character.

~ Les Brown

Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders' spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Success in golf depends less on strength of body than upon strength of mind and character.

~ Arnold Palmer

They say everything you go through in your childhood builds character and inner strength.

~ Curtis Joseph

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

~ Stephen Covey

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

~ Leon Trotsky

Somehow I kept my head above water. I relied on the discipline, character, and strength that I had started to develop as that little girl in her first swimming pool.

~ Esther Williams

The strength of the United States is not the gold at Fort Knox or the weapons of mass destruction that we have, but the sum total of the education and the character of our people.

~ Claiborne Pell

Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.

~ Baruch Spinoza

Then when I went to Iraq and saw the strength and character the men and women in our military service exhibit every day and their belief in what they're doing, I knew I wanted to get that on film and share it with everyone. They are my inspiration.

~ Joe Nichols

The perfection of Christian character depends wholly upon the grace and strength found alone in God.

~ Ellen G. White

When it comes to developing character strength, inner security and unique personal and interpersonal talents and skills in a child, no institution can or ever will compare with, or effectively substitute for, the home's potential for positive influence.

~ Stephen Covey

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

~ Albert Einstein

Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained.

~ John Stuart Mill

In my heart of hearts, I'm a character actress, whereas other people play their one strength.

~ Juliette Lewis