Study In Character Quotes

Was it the forgetfulness of old age or personal incapacity that made the man able to say please but not thank you? ~ Yann Martel

The life of Abraham Lincoln is by most accounts an amazing study in character formation. Yet he was notoriously disorganized; he even had a file in his law office labeled If you can't find it anywhere else, try looking here. ~ John Ortberg

She's wearing the same red and yellow BAM! T-shirt from before, which means (a) she slept in, (b) she owns several identical T-shirts, or (c) she's a cartoon character - all of which are appealing alternatives. ~ Robin Sloan

In war, three-quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

In 'Breaking Bad,' we have a lead character who definitely finds himself in a situation he would never have expected to find himself in normally. ~ Michelle MacLaren

I would have loved to have been in 'Bottle Rocket' to take over Owen Wilson's character Dignan, because he's just awesome and amazing. I would have loved to have been in 'The Darjeeling Limited' maybe. I think that would have been a good one to be in. ~ Tony Revolori

A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream. At one's feet that which can be cultivated and plucked; over head that which one can study and meditate upon: some flowers on earth and all the stars in the sky. ~ Victor Hugo

There are only two types of waves that can travel across the universe bringing us information about things far away: electromagnetic waves (which include light, X-rays, gamma rays, microwaves, radio waves…); and gravitational waves.
Electromagnetic waves consist of oscillating electric and magnetic forces that travel at light speed. When they impinge on charged particles, such as the electrons in a radio or TV antenna, they shake the particles back and forth, depositing in the particles the information the waves carry. That information can then be amplified and fed into a loudspeaker or on to a TV screen for humans to comprehend.
Gravitational waves, according to Einstein, consist of an oscillatory space warp: an oscillating stretch and squeeze of space. In 1972 Rainer (Rai) Weiss at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had invented a gravitational-wave detector, in which mirrors hanging inside the corner and ends of an L-shaped vacuum pipe are pushed apart along one leg of the L by the stretch of space, and pushed together along the other leg by the squeeze of space. Rai proposed using laser beams to measure the oscillating pattern of this stretch and squeeze. The laser light could extract a gravitational wave's information, and the signal could then be amplified and fed into a computer for human comprehension.
The study of the universe with electromagnetic telescopes (electromagnetic astronomy) was initiated by Galileo, when he built a small optical tele ~ Stephen Hawking

Books, of which the principles are diseased or deformed, must be kept on the shelf of the scholar, as the man of science preserves monsters in glasses. They belong to the study of the mind's morbid anatomy, and ought to be accurately labelled. Voltaire will still be a wit, notwithstanding he is a scoffer; and we may admire the brilliant spots and eyes of the viper, if we acknowledge its venom and call it a reptile. ~ Robert Aris Willmott

Be more interested in character than reputation ~ John Wooden

Dad's Theory of Arrogance
that everyone always assumes they're the Principal Character of Desire and/or Loathing in everybody else's Broadway Play. ~ Marisha Pessl

I tend to relate to a character in terms of the arc: what's interesting is where he starts versus where he ends up. ~ Edward Norton

The actor needs to find out what the basic fight is in every character in every scene. ~ Michael Shurtleff

My true belief about Rock 'n' Roll
and there have been a lot of phrases attributed to me over the years
is this: I believe this kind of music is demonic ... A lot of the beats in music today are taken from voodoo, from the voodoo drums. If you study music in rhythms, like I have, you'll see that is true. I believe that kind of music is driving people from Christ. It is contagious ~ Little Richard

I needed to create some dramatic tension to sustain the interest of the audience. For instance, the boy in the film is not in the play, so this relationship that he had with the former teacher, and his guilt, this is not at all in the play. I thought it would be interesting to look at in the film, and I added stuff like that around the main character. For me, it was not more difficult or less difficult. ~ Philippe Falardeau

He was careful to instruct him in such an affable, kind, and gentle way, that he easily prevailed with him to consider studying, not so much as a duty of obedience to his superiors, but as the way to purchase for himself a most delightsom and invaluable good. In effect, he soon created in Philaretus so strong a passion to acquire knowledge, that what time he could spare from a scholar's task, which his retentive memory made him not find uneasy, he would usually employ so greedily in reading, that his master would sometimes be necessitated to force him out to play, on which, and upon study, he looked, as if their natures were inverted. ~ Robert Boyle

I know no study that will take you nearer the way to happiness than the study of nature - and I include in the study of nature not only things and their forces, but also mankind and their ways, and the moulding of the affections and the will into an earnest desire not only to be happy, but to create happiness. ~ Helen Keller

What the expression is intended to mean, I think, is that there is a better and a worse element in the character of each individual, and that when the naturally better element controls the worse then the man is said to be "master of himself", as a term of praise. But when - as a result of bad upbringing or bad company one s better element is overpowered by the numerical superiority of one s worse impulses, then one is criticized for not being master of oneself and for lack of self control. ~ Plato

I need to react to a script, to feel strongly about it in some way. And I need it to be a complex character for sure. And also, I think a lot about what kind of audience there is for the film, what they're looking for and ways to connect with them in the playing of a character. ~ Jeremy Renner

A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities. ~ Charles De Gaulle

Sometimes we fall, sometimes we stumble, but we can't stay down. We can't allow life to beat us down. Everything happens for a reason, and it builds character in us, and it tells us what we are about and how strong we really are when we didn't think we could be that strong. ~ Gail Devers

The revolution of Jesus is in the first place and continuously a revolution of the human heart or spirit. It did not and does not proceed by means of the formation of social institutions and laws, the outer forms of our existence, intending that these would then impose a good order of life upon people who come under their power. Rather, his is a revolution of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and to one another. It is one that changes their ideas, beliefs, feelings, and habits of choice, as well as their bodily tendencies and social relations. It penetrates to the deepest layers of their soul. ~ Dallas Willard

Study after study confirms that even when you control for variables like profession, education, hours worked, age, marital status, and children, men still are compensated substantially more - even in professions, like nursing, dominated by women. No wonder there's a gender gap. ~ Dee Dee Myers

Joy is God's basic character. Joy is his eternal destiny. God is the happiest being in the universe. ~ John Ortberg Jr.

In the sixties, in the middle sixties, suddenly comics became this hip thing, and college students and hippies were reading them. So I was one of them, and I started reading, basically it was the Marvel Renaissance at that point. It was all their new characters, Spiderman and the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. ~ Trina Robbins

The whole worl's in a state o' chassis. ~ Sean O'Casey

I've noticed...that whenever a man is asked to be realistic he is being asked to betray something in which he believes. It is the favorite argument of those who believe that only the end matters, not the means. ~ Louis L'Amour

How do you study something that cannot possibly get your clothes dirty? How do astrophysicists know anything about either the universe or its contents if all the objects to be studied are light-years away? Fortunately, the light emanating from a star reveals much more to us than its position in the sky or how bright it is. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Marinating chicken in miso adds lots of character to the meat with little work. ~ Yotam Ottolenghi

When new pages are sent to editors and see rejection, we should ask for the reasons. We must study the reasons for failure and learn. It's not about struggle with our limitations or with public or the publishers. It's more about treating it like in aikido; the strength of the attack is used to defeat him with the same effort. ~ Jean Giraud

Film is something I've always loved since I was very young. In fact, I actually wanted to study to be a filmmaker when I was younger. ~ Gustavo Santaolalla

A great deal of effort has been devoted to explaining Babel. Not the Babel event
-- which most people consider to be a myth -- but the fact that languages tend
to diverge. A number of linguistic theories have been developed in an effort to
tie all languages together."
"Theories Lagos tried to apply to his virus hypothesis."
"Yes. There are two schools: relativists and universalists. As George Steiner
summarizes it, relativists tend to believe that language is not the vehicle of
thought but its determining medium. It is the framework of cognition. Our
perceptions of everything are organized by the flux of sensations passing over
that framework. Hence, the study of the evolution of language is the study of
the evolution of the human mind itself."
"Okay, I can see the significance of that. What about the universalists?"
"In contrast with the relativists, who believe that languages need not have
anything in common with each other, the universalists believe that if you can
analyze languages enough, you can find that all of them have certain traits in
common. So they analyze languages, looking for such traits."
"Have they found any?"
"No. There seems to be an exception to every rule."
"Which blows universalism out of the water."
"Not necessarily. They explain this problem by saying that the shared traits
are too deeply buried to be analyzable."
"Which is a cop out."
"Their ~ Neal Stephenson

I always collect a bunch of images for every film that I do, that reminds me of an essence of the character, or the time that they live in, or what they're experiencing. ~ Mia Wasikowska

The national curriculum for the Swedish preschool is twenty pages long and goes on at length about things like fostering respect for one another, human rights, and democratic values, as well as a lifelong desire to learn. The document's word choices are a pretty good clue to what Swedish society wants and expects from toddlers and preschoolers. The curriculum features the word "play" thirteen times, "language" twelve times, "nature" six times, and "math" five times. But there is not a single mention of "literacy" or "writing." Instead, two of the most frequently used words are "learning" (with forty-eight appearances) and "development" (forty-seven).

The other Scandinavian countries have similar early childhood education traditions. In Finland, formal teaching of reading doesn't start until the child begins first grade, at age seven, and in the Finnish equivalent of kindergarten, which children enroll in the year they turn six, teachers will only teach reading if a child is showing an interest in it. Despite this lack of emphasis on early literacy, Finland is considered the most literate country in the world, with Norway coming in second, and Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden rounding out the top five, according to a 2016 study by Central Connecticut State University. John Miller, who conducted the study, noted that the five Nordic countries scored so well because "their monolithic culture values reading. ~ Linda Åkeson McGurk

I supposed this was one reason why people got married, to make a fiction that was tellable. It wasn't just movies that couldn't contain the full cast of characters - it was us. We had to winnow life down so we knew where to put our tenderness and attention; and that was a good, sweet thing. But together or alone, we were still embedded in a kaleidoscope, ruthlessly varied and continuous, until the end of the end. ~ Miranda July

I would say that for the younger musicians, technical proficiency is necessary and a given these days. But the study and the way you function in society, your beliefs and the way you live, that is where you will find a real musician, a real artist. ~ David Finckel

The results of five experiments involving more than a thousand participants showed that reading literary fiction improves our ability to detect and understand other people's emotions. But it can't be any sort of fiction. The researchers distinguished between "popular fiction" (where the author leads you by the hand as a reader) and "literary fiction" (in which you must find your own way and fill in the gaps). Instead of being told why a certain character behaves as they do, you have to figure it out yourself. That way, the book becomes not just a simulation of a social experience, it is a social experience. ~ Meik Wiking

While there have been great technological advances in the study of the brain, yielding enormous amounts of data on its physical and psychological characteristics, the old problem of relating mind to brain in a reasonable fashion remains unaccomplished. ~ Michael Gazzaniga

The anarchists cannot consider, like the collectivists, that a remuneration which would be proportionate to the hours of labour spent by each person in the production of riches may be an ideal, or even an approach to an ideal, society. Without entering here into a discussion as to how far the exchange value of each merchandise is really measured now by the amount of labour necessary for its production - a separate study must be devoted to the subject - we must say that the collectivist ideal seems to us merely unrealizable in a society which has been brought to consider the necessaries for production as a common property. Such a society would be compelled to abandon the wage-system altogether. It appears impossible that the mitigated individualism of the collectivist school could co-exist with the partial communism implied by holding land and machinery in common - unless imposed by a powerful government, much more powerful than all those of our own times. The present wage-system has grown up from the appropriation of the necessaries for production by the few; it was a necessary condition for the growth of the present capitalist production; and it cannot outlive it, even if an attempt be made to pay to the worker the full value of his produce, and hours-of-labour-checks be substituted for money. Common possession of the necessaries for production implies the common enjoyment of the fruits of the common production; and we consider that an equitable organization of society can o ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

Do things for the right reasons and the money will follow. ~ Frank Sonnenberg

If you want to live long, sleep more and eat less ... Intermittent fasting was associated with more than a 40 percent reduction in heart disease risk in a study of 448 people published in the American Journal of Cardiology reporting that 'most diseases, including cancer, diabetes and even neurodegenerative illnesses, are forstalled' by caloric reduction. ~ Christopher Ryan

Say you've just read Faulkner's 'Barn Burning'. Like the son in the story, you've sensed the faults in your father's character. Thinking about them makes you uncomfortable, left alone you'd probably close the book and move on to other thoughts. But instead you are taken in hand by a tall, brooding man with a distinguished limp who involves you and a roomful of other boys in the consideration of what it means to be a son. The loyalty that is your duty and your worth and your problem. The goodness of loyalty and its difficulties and snares, how loyalty might also become betrayal - of the self and the world outside the circle of blood.

You've never had this conversation before, not with anyone. And even as its happening you understand that just as your father's troubles with the world - emotional frailty, self-doubt, incomplete honesty - will not lead him to set it on fire, your own loyalty will never be the stuff of tragedy. You will not turn bravely and painfully from your father, as the boy in the story does, but foresake him, without regret. And as you accept that separation, it seems to happen; your father's sad, fleshy face grows vague, and you blink it away and look up to where your teachers leans against his desk, one hand in a coat pocket, the other rubbing his bum knee as he listens desolately to the clever bore behind you saying something about bird imagery. ~ Tobias Wolff

The Doctor' is the kind of character - because the guest cast is changing all the time, there are very few constants in the show, so the 'Doctor'- when you're there, you're in it a lot. You're speaking a lot. ~ David Tennant

She, the clear heart'ed soul shall show a small crack (in heart) as clearly as the equally transparent, but dirty rogue can cleverly hide it. ~ Priyavrat Thareja

Most people, though, only see the surface reality of writing and think of writers as involved in quiet, intellectual work done in their study. If you have the strength to lift a coffee cup, they figure, you can write a novel. But once you try your hand at it, you soon find that it isn't as peaceful a job as it seems. ~ Haruki Murakami

She is beautiful in the way only a haunted person can be, like a glimmer of light falling over fragments of shattered glass - dangerous if not treaded around with wary feet. ~ M.R. Pilot

We recognize that our progress as a species does not have to be defined in terms of wealth or material and physical growth any more than our progress as individuals has to be defined in terms of physical growth. Physical growth of the body reaches a limit, but the character and the soul of the individual continues to grow, or at least has a chance to continue, often to our last breath. It is simple minded to define our well being in material terms, when that well-being has an aesthetic dimension, and intellectual dimension, a moral dimension. ~ Wes Jackson

In the Vassar study, there was a group of students who, in Senior year, neither suffered conflict to the point of breakdown, nor stopped their own growth to flee into marriage. These were students who were preparing for a profession. They gained in college interests deep enough to commit themselves to a career. The study revealed that virtually all such students with professional ambitions plan to marry, but marriage is for them an activity in which they will voluntarily choose to participate, rather than something that is necessary for any sense of personal identity. Such students have a clear sense of direction, a greater degree of independence and self-confidence than most. They maybe be engaged or deeply in-love, but they do not feel they must sacrifice their own individualities or their career ambitions if they wish to marry. With these girls, the psychologists did not get the impression --as they did with so many-- that interest in men and in marriage is a kind of defense against intellectual development. Their interest in a particular man was real. ~ Betty Friedan

Pleasure must be found in study. ~ Paul Cezanne