The road is long if one proceeds by way of precepts but short and effectual if by way of personal example.
SenecaTags: character leadership
And if I am not mistaken here is the secret of the greatness that was Spain. In Spain it is men that are the poems, the pictures and the buildings. Men are its philosophies. They lived, these Spaniards of the Golden Age; they felt and did; they did not think. Life was what they sought and found, life in its turmoil, its fervour and its variety. Passion was the seed that brought them forth and passion was the flower they bore. But passion alone cannot give rise to a great art. In the arts the Spaniards invented nothing. They did little in any of those they practised, but give a local colour to a virtuosity they borrowed from abroad. Their literature, as I have ventured to remark, was not of the highest rank; they were taught to paint by foreign masters, but, inapt pupils, gave birth to one painter only of the very first class; they owed their architecture to the Moors, the French and the Italians, and the works themselves produced were best when they departed least from their patterns. Their preeminence was great, but it lay in another direction: it was a preeminence of character. In this I think they have been surpassed by none and equalled only by the ancient Romans. It looks as though all the energy, all the originality, of this vigorous race had been disposed to one end and one end only, the creation of man. It is not in art that they excelled, they excelled in what is greater than art--in man. But it is thought that has the last word.
W. Somerset MaughamTags: art literature thought character spaniards ancient-romans creation-of-man the-golden-age the-last-word
We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.
Walter BagehotTags: psychology character personality perception-of-reality
Reason is an outcome of frailty and resentment. When Will fails to cope with the labour of life, or the life of labour, its fragile remnants are set to construct a slighter world of justifications.
Raheel FarooqTags: reason philosophy will logic character justifications
His character would be blamed, loathed, discussed, and adored – but somewhere there, behind his mask of a hero, Cardew would remain faceless.
Anonymous.
Tags: love hate romance character mystery gothic unknown hero young-adult pretend mask hide blame adore pretending behind heroic loved anonymous discuss loathe masked cardew adored blamed discussed faceless loathed
Oh, he did look like a deity – the perfect balance of danger and charm, he was at the same time fascinating and inaccessible, distant because of his demonstrated flawlessness, and possessing such strength of character that he was dismaying and at the same time utterly attractive in an enticing and forbidden way.
Simona PanovaTags: love man woman romantic beauty god romance relationships danger temptation myth balance charming legend character suspense personality looks girl perfect perfection boy description gothic hero young-adult attraction mythology relationship deity beautiful possession charm dangerous pretty nightmare in-love forbidden female look crush goddess handsome heroic male character-description flawless tempted distant attractive tempt attract gothic-romance dismay entice demonstrate fascinating goth possessive possess bewitched bewitching he enticing she tempting forbid young-adult-gothic-romance bewitch demonstrative dismaying enticed flawlessness inaccessible
As in the universe every atom has an effect, however minuscule, on every other atom, so that to pinch the fabric of Time and Space at any point is to shake the whole length and breadth of it, so in fiction every element has effect on every other, so that to change a character's name from Jane to Cynthia is to make the fictional ground shudder under her feet.
John GardnerTags: time fiction character space
The writer's characters must stand before us with a wonderful clarity, such continuous clarity that nothing they do strikes us as improbable behavior for just that character, even when the character's action is, as sometimes happens, something that came as a surprise to the writer himself. We must understand, and the writer before us must understand, more than we know about the character; otherwise neither the writer nor the reader after him could feel confident of the character's behavior when the character acts freely.
John GardnerTags: fiction character understand character-development know character-building
I used to take my morning tea at her kiosk and I took an interest in what she was doing. I later learnt she was taking care of her grandchildren. Sadly, she was taken ill and had to close her nylon-walled smoky shack. But all the wit and cunning of the character came from her.
Stanley GazembaTags: interview character will-power
To keep any great nation up to a high standard of civilization there must be enough superior characters to hold the balance of power, but the very moment the balance of power gets into the hands of second-rate men and women, a decline of that nation is inevitable.
Christian D. LarsonTags: civilization characters character superior decline nation great inevitable balance-of-power high-standard
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