character quotes

“He's meant to be that classic Homer, Ulysses, Hercules - a character who goes out or has some gift of some kind. He goes on a journey of discovery and part of that is falling into darkness - the temptations of life. ”

— Robert Redford

“I wasn't trying to top Pulp Fiction with Jackie Brown. I wanted to go underneath it and make a more modest character study movie.”

— Quentin Tarantino

“I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments. ”

— Dr Seuss

“The Black Mamba collection of watches is me: It is my alter ego, so to speak. As I mentioned before, it is sharp, cutting edge and sleek which are characteristics I try to apply when I'm out there on the basketball court.”

— Kobe Bryant

“Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time. ”

— George Washington Bush

“Today we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion and character. ”

— George Washington Bush

“Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them. ”

— Napoleon Bonaparte

“What I have in common with the character in 'Truman' is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started. ”

— Jim Carrey

“All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“I always liked characters that were more grounded in reality. ”

— Clint Eastwood

“ It's much more fun to play something you're nothing like than what you are... It's much easier to hide yourself in a character. ”

— Clint Eastwood

“ You are always hoping that movie audiences are interested in characters and interested in story values rather than just mindless special effects. But you never know. ”

— Clint Eastwood

“Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think. ”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. ”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character. ”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

— Helen Keller

“The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.”

— Maya Angelou

“Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

“People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.”

— Warren Buffett

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”

— Ernest Hemingway

“In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.”

— Edward Hopper

“After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.”

— Edward Hopper

“The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.”

— William James

“Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.”

— William James

“No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.”

— William James

“It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.”

— William James

“I would absolutely characterize myself as ambitious.”

— Kim Kardashian

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

— Kim Kardashian