Characteristics Quotes - Page 12

• and in some of the people of the town and community surrounding it, one of the characteristic diseases of the twentieth century was making its way: the suspicion that they would be greatly improved if they were somewhere else.

  Wendell Berry

  Somewhere Else, People, Community

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• Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Humanity, Quality, Signals

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.130, University of Georgia Press

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• Dependability, integrity, the characteristic of never knowingly doing anything wrong, that you would never cheat anyone, that you would give everybody a fair deal. Character is a sort of an all-inclusive thing. If a man has character, everyone has confidence in him.

  Omar N. Bradley

  Integrity, Character, Men

  "19 Stars : A Study in Military Character and Leadership". Book by Edgar F. Puryear Jr., 1981.

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• Kindness is the essence of greatness and the fundamental characteristic of the noblest men and women I have known. Kindness is a passport that opens doors and fashions friends. It softens hearts and molds relationships that can last lifetimes.

  Joseph B. Wirthlin

  Fashion, Kindness, Heart

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• Isn't it a characteristic of the age we live in that it has made everyone in a way a migrant and a member of a minority?

  Amin Maalouf

  Age, Migrants, Minorities

  Amin Maalouf (2001). “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong”, p.37, Arcade Publishing

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• It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the party was trying to achieve.

  George Orwell

  Lying, Party, Insecurity

  George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.60, Arcturus Publishing

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• I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe - what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in thetreatent, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing.

  Lance Armstrong

  Believe, Long, Shining

  "It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life". Book by Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins, May 22, 2000.

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• Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.

  Gary Zukav

  Acceptance, Science, Faith Religion

  Gary Zukav (1979). “The dancing Wu Li masters: an overview of the new physics”, Bantam

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• I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters—I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world.

  Georges Simenon

  Brother, Character, Age

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• One can never really give a proof of the reality of anything; reality is not something open to proof, it is something established. It is established just because proof is not enough. It is this characteristic of language, at once indispensable and inadequate, which shows the reality of the external world. Most people hardly ever realize this, because it is rare that the very same man thinks and puts his thought into action.

  Simone Weil

  Reality, Men, Thinking

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• I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Thinking, Hair, Blood

  "American Psycho". www.imdb.com. 2000.

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• Absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics.

  Thomas Nagel

  Interesting, Manifestation, Absurdity

  Thomas Nagel (2012). “Mortal Questions”, p.23, Cambridge University Press

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• But whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living. And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one for this (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I'm going to blame John Cusack.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Relationship, Fall, Mind Blowing

  Chuck Klosterman (2004). “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto”, p.2, Simon and Schuster

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• Rather than accepting that we are the loving beings that He created, we have arrogantly thought that we could create ourselves, and then create God. Because we are angry and judgmental, we have projected those characteristics onto Him. We have made up a God in our image. But God remains who He is and always has been: the energy, the thought of unconditional love.

  Marianne Williamson

  Unconditional Love, Energy, Judgmental

  Marianne Williamson (2009). “A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles”, p.19, Harper Collins

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• What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Giving, Sublime, World

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.86, Publishdrive

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• Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blasé ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days … the region of pure poetry.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Fashion, Two, Mind

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• Now death is uncool, old-fashioned. To my mind the defining characteristic of our era is spin, everything tailored to vanishing point by market research, brands and bands manufactured to precise specifications; we are so used to things transmuting into whatever we would like them to be that it comes as a profound outrage to encounter death, stubbornly unspinnable, only and immutably itself.

  Tana French

  Profound, Mind, Encounters

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• My family had a lot of characteristics - achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations - that all seemed to be recessive in me.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Ambition, Expectations, Achievement

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.165, Vintage

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• It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works.

  Isaac Asimov

  Chiefs

  Isaac Asimov (1951). “The foundation trilogy: three classics of science fiction”

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• The things that we preceive as beautiful may be different, but the actual characteristics we ascribe to beautiful objects are similar. Think about it. When something strikes us as beautiful, it displays more presence and sharpness of shape and vividness of color, doesn't it? It stands out. It shines. It seems almost iridescent compared to the dullness of other objects less attractive.

  James Redfield

  Beautiful, Thinking, Color

  James Redfield (2009). “Celestine Insights - Limited Edition of Celestine Prophecy and Tenth Insight”, p.31, Hachette UK

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• I miss him like one might miss a scar, or wooden leg, something disfiguring but characteristic.

  Nick Hornby

  Missing, Legs, Might

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• None of us is perfect. There was only one perfect man who ever walked the earth, and He was the Son of God. We all have weaknesses and I guess we all make mistakes and will make mistakes in the future, but look for the virtues, the strengths, the goodness in those with whom you labor, and draw those characteristics into your own lives and make them a part of yourselves, and you will be the richer for it all the days that you live.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Mistake, Son, Men

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• No one likes to admit that in the end we all die by inches, gradually losing all the defining visual characteristics that make us us

  Simon R. Green

  Likes, Defining, Losing

  Simon R. Green (2014). “Drinking Midnight Wine”, p.93, Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

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• Dad always warned that it was misleading when one imagined people, when one sas them in the Mind's Eye, because one never remembered them as they really were, with as many inconsistencies as there were hairs on a human head (100,000 to 200,000). Instead, the mind used a lazy shorthand, smoothed the person over into their most dominating characteristic--their pessimism or insecurity (something really being lazy, turning them into either Nice or Mean)--and one made the mistake of judging them from this basis alone and risked, on a subsequent encounter, being dangerously surprised.

  Marisha Pessl

  Dad, Mistake, Nice

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• To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.' Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Pursuit Of Happiness, Lasts, Culture

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.106, Beacon Press

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