Character Quotes - Page 72

I always find it easier to portray myself as being unlikeable and idiotic; to actually play a character that is likeable and engages the audience is far more difficult. It's a more subtle kind of challenge.

The 'Inside-Out' approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self, with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves recedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.

It's not enough to have values without vision ; you want to be good, but you want to be good for something. On the other hand, vision without values can create a Hitler . An empowering mission statement deals with both character and competence; what you want to be and what you want to do in your life.

Sorrow is better than laughter; for, by the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better.

Some of the most intense affairs are between actors and characters. There's a fire in the human heart and we jump into it with the same obsession as we have with our lovers.

I look at leading men because that's ultimately what I'm aspiring to do. But I also look at character actors and people that I'm just in awe by, just because I can relate to it.

No one can long hide behind a mask; the pretense soon lapses into the true character.

Respect your characters, even the ­minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters' stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist's.

I had to learn early on that where conservatives are concerned, the truth about them is the last thing anybody wants to report. It's the lies and distortions, the mischaracterizations, the character assassinations, that people want to report.

Suffering is nature's way of indicating a mistaken attitude or way of behavior, and to the nonegocentric person every moment of suffering is the opportunity for growth. People should rejoice in suffering, strange as it sounds, for this is a sign of the availability of energy to transform their characters.

A character standard is far more important than even a gold standard. The success of all economic systems is still dependent upon both righteous leaders and righteous people. In the last analysis, our national future depends upon our national character that is, whether it is spiritually or materially minded.

God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.

The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self - our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.

Ron Swanson is more than the MVP of the 'Parks and Recreation' squad, more than just the funniest character on TV - he's the perfect depiction of aggrieved American manhood at the twilight of the empire.

One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay. He is in love with the whole of that reality, and will not willingly be deprived even of the most insignificant fragment of it - just like the lovers and men of ambition we described earlier on.

The beginning is the most important part...for that is the time character is being formed.

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are doing at that moment with all your mind, strength, and will, if you don't feel joy and excitement while writing it, then you're wasting good white paper, even if it sells, because there are other ways in which a writer can bring in the rent money besides writing bad or phony stories.

The doctor used to tell me that every person about to die becomes a music box playing the melody that best describes his life, his character, and his hopes. For some, it's a popular waltz; for others, a march.

I don't believe in miracles. I believe in character

I laugh when I end up on the worst-dressed lists. I'm not trying to be fashionable. I know I'm kind of a cartoon character. Do people honestly think I'm wearing a kafkan in order to be fashionable?

It isn't that I dislike artists, but I can't stand anyone who puts on those ponderous airs of a man of character.

Thus it is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so; but you must have the mind so disposed that when it is needful to be otherwise you may be able to change to the opposite qualities.

If I have learned one thing in my 54 years, it is that it is very good for the character to engage in sports which put your life in danger from time to time. It breeds a saneness in dealing with day to day trivialities which probably cannot be got in any other way, and a habit of quick decisions.

I could never think well of a man's intellectual or moral character, if he was habitually unfaithful to his appointments.

Every role affects an actor a little bit. There's always a little chunk of a character that stays left over in your heart.