Characteristics Quotes - Page 33

• Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors. They are the oldest civilized people on earth. Their civilization passes through phases but its basic characteristics remain the same. They yield, they bend to the wind, but they never break.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Yield, Wind, Civilization

  "China, Past and Present". Book by Pearl S. Buck, Ch. 1, 1972.

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• The great characteristic of men of active genius is a sublime self-confidence, springing not from self-conceit, but from an intense identification of the man with his object, which lifts him altogether above the fear of danger and death, which gives to his enterprise a character of insanity to the common eye, and which communicates an almost superhuman audacity to his will.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Character, Eye, Self Confidence

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.87

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• Sex and love are like tea and milk. They can be mixed or they can be taken straight. Each has certain distinctive characteristics, but when they are combined they form a unique substance.

  Joyce Brothers

  Sex, Taken, Unique

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• Emulation has been termed a spur to virtue, and assumes to be a spur of gold. But it is a spur composed of baser materials, and if tried in the furnace will be found to want that fixedness which is the characteristic of gold. He that pursues virtue, only to surpass others, is not far from wishing others less forward than himself; and he that rejoices too much at his own perfections will be too little grieved at the defects of other men.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Perfection, Gold

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.113

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• Scarcely have I ever heard or read the introductory phrase, "I may say without vanity," but some striking and characteristic instance of vanity has immediately followed.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Vanity, May, Phrases

  Benjamin Franklin (1815). “Life of Doctor Benjamin Franklin”, p.10

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• Ever the characteristic manners of cowardice.

  Edward Everett

  Cowardice, Manners

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• The most common characteristic of women's history is to be lost and discovered, lost again and rediscovered, lost once more and re-rediscovered - a process of tragic waste and terrible silences that will continue until women's stories are a full and equal part of the human story.

  Gloria Steinem

  History, Silence, Waste

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• An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Cruelty, Meanness, Infallible

  Samuel Johnson (1819). “The Beauties of Samuel Johnson: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous”, p.186

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• I too acknowledge the all-out omnipotence of early culture and nature; hereby we have either a doddered dwarf-bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree! either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their education,--what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Education, Men, Dwarves

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• It is a characteristic of pleasure that we can never recognize it to be pleasure till after it is gone.

  Alexander Smith

  Gone, Pleasure

  Alexander Smith (1863). “Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.60

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• We are nearly all composed of such a complex mixture of human qualities that in each one of us reside both masculine and feminine principles: what man is without any female attribute and what woman never demonstrates any masculine characteristics?

  Natalie Clifford Barney

  Men, Masculine And Feminine, Quality

  Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.87, New Victoria Publishers

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• Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own characteristic qualities.

  Emma Goldman

  Sex, Self, Oneness

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.143, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• The rules of prudence, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. "Thou shalt not" is their characteristic formula.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Law, Tables, Stones

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1831). “Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character on the Several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion: Illustrated by Select Passages from Our Elder Divines, Especially from Archbishop Leighton”, p.16

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• The leading characteristic of the savage state is its refusal or avoidance of industry.

  Arthur Brisbane

  Savages, Refusal, States

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• By providing cheap and wholesome reading for the young, we have partly succeeded in driving from the field that which was positively bad; yet nothing is easier than to overdo a reformation, and, through the characteristic indulgence of American parents, children are drugged with a literature whose chief merit is its harmlessness.

  Agnes Repplier

  Children, Reading, Parent

  Agnes Repplier (1888). “Books and Men”

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• fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.

  Agnes Repplier

  Play, Groups, Fairness

  Agnes Repplier (1924). “Under dispute”

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• Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.

  Agnes Repplier

  Humor, Obscure, Social

  Agnes Repplier (1894). “In the Dozy Hours, and Other Papers”

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• the most comfortable characteristic of the period [1775-1825], and the one which incites our deepest envy, is the universal willingness to accept a good purpose as a substitute for good work.

  Agnes Repplier

  Envy, Purpose, Good Work

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• A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies; one may say simply "fineness of nature.

  John Ruskin

  Mind, Gentleman, Firsts

  John Ruskin (1868). “pt. VI: Of leaf beauty. pt. VII: Of cloud beauty. pts. VIII-IX: Of ideas of relation”, p.278

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• A man is known to his dog by the smell, to his tailor by the coat, to his friend by the smile; each of these know him, but how little or how much depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man is known only to God.

  John Ruskin

  Dog, Character, Men

  John Ruskin (1848). “Modern Painters”, p.55

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• Courage, so far as it is a sign of race, is peculiarly the mark of a gentleman or a lady; but it becomes vulgar if rude or insensitive, while timidity is not vulgar, if it be a characteristic of race or fineness of make. A fawn is not vulgar in being timid, nor a crocodile "gentle" because courageous.

  John Ruskin

  Courage, Race, Rude

  John Ruskin (1869). “Modern Painters: pt. 6. Of leaf beauty. pt. 7. Of cloud beauty. pt. 8-9. Of ideas of relation: Of invention formal. Of invention spiritual”, p.288

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• Eating reveals the characteristic grossness of the human race and also the in-built failure of its satisfactions. We arrive eager, we stuff ourselves and we go away depressed and disappointed and probably feeling a bit queasy into the bargain. It's an image of the déçu in human existence. A greedy start and a stupefied finish. Waiters, who are constantly observing this cycle, must be the most disillusioned of men.

  Iris Murdoch

  Men, Race, Feelings

  Iris Murdoch (2001). “A Fairly Honourable Defeat”, p.209, Penguin

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• When I am no longer being copied, I shall know that I am a back number. ... the fear of being copied is often the characteristic of the meager imagination.

  Elsie de Wolfe

  Numbers, Imagination, Imitation

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• Silences, as every observer knows, have strange characteristics all their own - passionate silences, and hateful silences, and silences full of friendly, purring content.

  Alice Duer Miller

  Silence, Friendly, Passionate

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• Superiority to circumstances is one of the most prominent characteristics of great men.

  Horace Mann

  Men, Circumstances, Prominent

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