That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go on; borne out as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous. Photography offers the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity.
"Then idiots talk," said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, "of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy."
We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate thier virtue or vice by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath ever moment....One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zsig zag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficent distance and it straightens itslef to the average tendency.
I love this quote uttered by the character Widget in The Night Circus. He credits it to Herr Thiessen but knows it is a literary quote by the another author. "Wine is bottled poetry
Lutheranism restricted itself to an exclusively ecclesiastical and theological character, while Calvinism put its impress in and outside the church upon every aspect of human life.
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.
Foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle ofyour character and aims.
She was too intent upon her work, and too earnest in what she said, and too composed and quiet altogether, to be on the watch for any look he might direct towards her in reply; so the shaft of his ungrateful glance fell harmless, and did not wound her.
In the tale proper--where there is no space for development of character or for great profusion and variety of incident--mere construction is, of course, far more imperatively demanded than in the novel.
In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully. You can't let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They have to live and breathe on their own.
In a word, acts of any kind produce habits or characters of the same kind. Hence we ought to make sure that our acts are of a certain kind; for the resulting character varies as they vary. It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained in his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference.
Character repudiates intellect, yet excites it; and character passes into thought, is published so, and then is ashamed before newflashes of moral worth.