We wonder why we don't have faith; the answer is, faith is confidence in the character of God and if we don't know what kind of God God is, we can't have faith.
Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou.
Laws are essential emanations from the self-poised character of God; they radiate from the sun to the circling edge of creation. Verily, the mighty Lawgiver hath subjected himself unto laws.
Rascals are always sociable, more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company.
That perhaps is your task--to find the relation between things that seem incompatible yet have a mysterious affinity, to absorb every experience that comes your way fearlessly and saturate it completely so that your poem is a whole, not a fragment; to re-think human life into poetry and so give us tragedy again and comedy by means of characters not spun out at length in the novelist's way, but condensed and synthesized in the poet's way--that is what we look to you to do now.
One of the first memories I have was watching Whoopi Goldberg perform her one-woman show on Broadway on HBO. She moved seamlessly through an array of spirited and soul-stirring characters, each one holding a mirror up to me and allowing me in many ways to see a reflection of myself on screen.
He had a cringing manner, but a very harsh voice; and his blandest smiles were so extremely forbidding, that to have had his company under the least repulsive circumstances, one would have wished him to be out of temper that he might only scowl.
Living gives you a better understanding of life. I would hope that my characters have become deeper and more rounded personalities. Wider travels have given me considerably greater insight into how cultural differences affect not only people, but politics and art.
The road to gooď is the roughest and steepest in
the universe. It is a wonder that so many succeed,
no wonder that so many fall. Character has to be
established through a thousand stumbles.
Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.