Characteristics Quotes - Page 24

• Now it is characteristic of play that one plays without reason and there must be no reason for it. Play is its own good reason.

  Lin Yutang

  Play, Reason, No Reason

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

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• People think they know me from my songs. But my repertoire of songs is so wide-ranging that you'd have to be a madman to figure out the characteristics of the person who wrote all those songs.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Thinking, People

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• The reason we see hypocrisy and fraud and unreality in others is because they are all in our own hearts. The great characteristic of a saint is humility-Yes, all those things and other evils would have been manifested in me but for the grace of God, therefore I have no right to judge.

  Oswald Chambers

  Heart, Humility, Evil

  Oswald Chambers (1994). “My Utmost for His Highest: The Golden Book of Oswald Chambers : Features the Author's Daily Prayers”, Discovery House Pub

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• It is one of the peculiar characteristics of the photograph that it isolates single moments in time.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Single Mom, Peculiar, Moments

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• A person of riyaa (showing off) has three characteristics : He is lazy when alone, energetic when with others, and increases in his actions when he is praised while decreasing in them when he is criticized.

  Ali ibn Abi Talib

  Lazy, Three, Action

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• Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus - you have to react, you follow every impulse.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Vulgarity Is, Inability, Pieces

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Aaron Ridley, Judith Norman (2005). “Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols: And Other Writings”, p.190, Cambridge University Press

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• It is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic nation that it have free and independent labor unions.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Independent, Organized Labor, Unions

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• Arminianism is 'natural' in one sense, in that it represents a characteristic perversion of Biblical teaching by the fallen mind of man.

  J. I. Packer

  Teaching, Biblical, Men

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• The purpose of the present study is not as it is in other inquiries, the attainment of knowledge, we are not conducting this inquiry in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, else there would be no advantage in studying it. For that reason, it becomes necessary to examine the problem of our actions and to ask how they are to be performed. For as we have said, the actions determine what kind of characteristics are developed.

  Aristotle

  Order, Would Be, Purpose

  Aristotle (1962). “Nicomachean Ethics”, MacMillan Publishing Company

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• Science, art, learning and metaphysical research all have their proper functions in life, but if you seek to blend them, you destroy their individual characteristics until, in time, you eliminate the spiritual, for instance, from the religious altogether.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Spiritual, Religious, Art

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.3223, Manonmani Publishers

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• Genius is its own reward; for the best that one is, one must necessarily be for oneself. . . . Further, genius consists in the working of the free intellect., and as a consequence the productions of genius serve no useful purpose. The work of genius may be music, philosophy, painting, or poetry; it is nothing for use or profit. To be useless and unprofitable is one of the characteristics of genius; it is their patent of nobility.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Music, Philosophy, Useless

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• I'd say that, to be a good deal maker, you have to have three basic characteristics - timing, timing, and timing.

  Richard Armitage

  Three, Timing, Makers

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• I do what I feel impelled to do, as an artist would. Scientists function in the same way. I see all these as creative activities, as all part of the process of discovery. Perhaps that's one of the characteristics of what I call the evolvers, any subset of the population who keep things moving in a positive, creative, constructive way, revealing the truth and beauty that exists in life and in nature.

  Jonas Salk

  Moving, Artist, Discovery

  Academy of Achievement interview, May 16, 1991.

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• Three characteristics a work of fiction must possess in order to be successful:
  
  1. It must have a precise and suspenseful plot.
  
  2. The author must feel a passionate urge to write it.
  
  3. He must have the conviction, or at least the illusion, that he is the only one who can handle this particular theme.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Writing, Successful, Order

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Raphael Soyer (1981). “Lost in America”, Doubleday Books

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• It was the first and most striking characteristic of Socrates never to become heated in discourse, never to utter an injurious or insulting word -- on the contrary, he persistently bore insult from others and thus put an end to the fray.

  Epictetus

  Insulting, Firsts, Ends

  Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (2016). “Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Golden Sayings, Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus, Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion”, p.64, Enhanced Media Publishing

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• Sometimes I thought of the Peace Corps as a reverse refugee organization, displacing all of us lost Midwesterners, and it was probably the only government entity that taught Americans to abandon key national characteristics. Pride, ambition, impatience, the instinct to control, the desire to accumulate, the missionary impulse - all of it slipped away.

  Peter Hessler

  Ambition, Pride, Organization

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• There is no pulse so sure of the state of a nation as its characteristic art product which has nothing to do with its material life.

  Gertrude Stein

  Art, Pulse, States

  Gertrude Stein (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of Gertrude Stein (Illustrated)”, p.6132, Delphi Classics

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• Probably the most distinctive characteristic of the successful politician is selective cowardice.

  Richard Harris

  Successful, Politician, Cowardice

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• I find humor to be the most attractive characteristic, but I certainly won't cancel anything out, considering when you love someone you love someone, and sometimes you just can't explain it.

  Zoey Deutch

  When You Love Someone, Someone You Love, Sometimes

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• Good librarians are natural intelligence operatives. They possess all of the skills and characteristics required for that work: curiosity, wide-ranging knowledge, good memories, organization and analytical aptitude, and discretion.

  Marilyn Johnson

  Memories, Skills, Organization

  Marilyn Johnson (2010). “This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All”, p.10, Harper Collins

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• Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Hypocrisy, Politics, Moral

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2013). “Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics”, p.95, Westminster John Knox Press

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• In other words, the propositions of philosophy are not factual, but linguistic in character - that is, they do not describe the behaviour of physical, or even mental, objects; they express definitions, or the formal consequences of definitions. Accordingly we may say that philosophy is a department of logic. For we will see that the characteristic mark of a purely logical enquiry, is that it is concerned with the formal consequences of our definitions and not with questions of empirical fact.

  A.J. Ayer

  Philosophy, Character, Enquiry

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• In the spiritual domain, criticism is love turned sour... If criticism becomes a habit, it will destroy the moral energy of the life and paralyze the spiritual force... Whenever you are in a critical temper, it is impossible to enter into communion with God. Criticism makes you hard and vindictive and cruel, and leaves you with the flattering unction that you are a superior person. It is impossible to develop the characteristics of a saint and maintain a critical attitude.

  Oswald Chambers

  Love, Spiritual, Attitude

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• The characteristic of a disciple is not that he does good things, but that he is good in his motives, having been made good by the supernatural grace of God.

  Oswald Chambers

  Grace, Doe, Good Things

  Oswald Chambers (2011). “My Utmost for His Highest Classic Edition”, p.421, Discovery House

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• Autonomy, adventure, imagination: entrepreneurshi p comprehends all this and more for us. The characteristic art form of our age may be the business plan.

  William Deresiewicz

  Art, Adventure, Imagination

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