The men who are great live with that which is substantial, they do not stay with that which is superficial; they abide with realities, they do not remain with what is showy. The one they discard, the other they hold.
To a commonplace man of limited intellect, for instance, nothing is simpler than to imagine himself an original character, and to revel in that belief without the slightest misgiving.
You do not settle whether an argument is justified by merely showing that it is of some use. The distinction is not between useful and useless experiments but between barbarous and civilized behaviour. Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.
I was always casting about for role models as a kid and the Star Trek was always available via reruns and also full of possibilities. I wanted to be like Spock because he was unflappable. I wanted to be like Kirk because he had magnetism and the ladies loved him. Bones was a grouch but he was sympathetic. The show worked like a boy band in that way... it had characters who embodied different psychic or emotional positions and that allowed me to see a great range of things.
I tend to enunciate pretty well. It's always seemed that my voice is one of those voices that people can recognize pretty easily - which has been a bit of a drawback for some characters because you're supposed to lose yourself in the character, but sometimes people look at a character and go "Oh, it's 'Weird Al.'"
The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves itto the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small.
Misanthropy ariseth from a man trusting another without having sufficient knowledge of his character, and, thinking him to be truthful, sincere, and honourable, finds a little afterwards that he is wicked, faithless, and then he meets with another of the same character. When a man experiences this often, and more particularly from those whom he considered his most dear and best friends, at last, having frequently made a slip, he hates the whole world, and thinks that there is nothing sound at all in any of them.
There is no telling what a human character is. Until the test comes. To most of us the test comes early in life. A man is confronted quite soon with the necessity to stand on his own feet, to face dangers and difficulties and to take his own line of dealing with them. It may be the straight way, it may be the crooked way --- whichever it is, a man usually learns early just what he is made of.
One thing about this face was very strange and startling. You could not look upon it in its most cheerful mood without feeling that it had some extraordinary capacity of expressing terror. It was not on the surface. It was in no one feature that it lingered. You could not take the eyes or mouth, or lines upon the cheek, and say, if this or that were otherwise, it would not be so. Yet there it always lurked-something for ever dimly seen, but ever there, and never absent for a moment.
Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.
I'd been concerned all along that the character of the president in the West Wing pilot would throw the ensemble out of whack, that that character would simply take up all the oxygen in a room. I wanted to hold off bringing this character in until the last possible moment.
There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them.