Quotes & Sayings About Definition Of Character

Although the general character of print-intelligence would be known to anyone who would be reading this book, you may arrive at a reasonably detailed definition of it by simply considering what is demanded of you as you read this book. You are required, first of all, to remain more or less immobile for a fairly long time. If you cannot do this (with this or any other book), our culture may label you as anything from hyperkinetic to undisciplined; in any case, as suffering from some sort of intellectual deficiency. — Neil Postman

Perhaps the greatest definition I think of character and quality is people who when they're truly great rather than making you feel that tall they make you feel that tall, that they're greatness as it were improves you. — Stephen Fry

Clearly, in an infinite universe every possibility must exist, including Balzac's. Imagining Cousin Bette called her into beaing, although only potentially. The universe is merely a quantity of information; imagining a fictional character does not add to that quantity
it cannot do so by definition
but does reorganize it slightly. The Bette-ish universe has not material existence, but the initial idea in Balzac's brandy-soaked brain then spreads outwards: not only to those who read his books, but also, by implication, backwards and forwards. Imagining Cousin Bette also creates, in potential, her ancestors and descendants, friends, enemies, acquaintances, her thoughts and actions and those of everybody else in her universe. — Iain Pears

The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions - none more so than the most capable. — Theodore Dreiser

The author says one character's definition of a classic is any book he'd heard of before he was thirty. — Sinclair Lewis

Charity is the pure love of Christ. Let's bring it down for us lay folk to understand. Selflessness, patience ... a great definition ... Charity: The ability to love the sinner and hate the sin. Note: For Hyrum Smith's other ideas which he regards as pertinent to Success, see Topics: Character, Charity, Goals, Humility, Peace of Mind, Sacrifice, Success-Change-Personal Growth, Success-Change-Constructive Imagination, Wisdom — Hyrum W. Smith

What really matters is not how well a character fits a definition, but how strongly he or she resonates. Characters with strong, resonant ideas at their core will have more of an impact on the cultural consciousness than a character who's just an empty collection of attributes. — Kurt Busiek

I think making a great action movie is one of the hardest cinematic endeavors. By definition, smart characters avoid action. Smart people don't go down dark alleys, but if you're making an action movie and you want to have an action sequence, somehow you have to get that character into that dangerous situation. — Doug Liman

A criminal has a kind of freedom by definition that the ordinary citizen doesn't have. The criminal's able to realize himself in ways not available to the general population, if you want to put it that way. They're interesting and unpredictable. Characters always have to break some sort of bound or other to be interesting. It also helps if they're paradoxical. — William Monahan

Whatseems to take place outside ideology (to be precise, in the street), in reality takes place in ideology. What really takes place in ideology seems therefore to take place outside it. That is why those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, 'I am ideological.' — Louis Althusser

It is the business of thought to define things, to find the boundaries; thought, indeed, is a ceaseless process of definition. It is the business of Art to give things shape. Anyone who takes no delight in the firm outline of an object, or in its essential character, has no artistic sense. He cannot even be nourished by Art. Like Ephraim, he feeds upon the East wind, which has no boundaries. — Vance Palmer

My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence. — Bernard Law Montgomery

With so many willing, complex women in the world, he had little respect for men who fixated on girlishness. Innocence was, by definition, an absence of experience - character - knowledge. To desire that absence seemed rather deviant. — Meredith Duran

I always believe, with any kind of hero, that you want to believe that their decision-making is right. That ultimately, I can trust what that guy's sense of right and wrong will be. Even in a vigilante movie, where you are going against the law by definition, you still want to agree with the fact that your character is breaking the law. — Lorenzo Di Bonaventura

The most common definition of [the word information] is: the action of informing; formation or molding of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching; communication of instructive knowledge.
This definition remained fairly constant until the years immediately following World War II, when it came in vogue to use 'information' as a technological term to define anything that was sent over an electric or mechanical channel. 'Information' became part of the vocabulary of the science of messages. And, suddenly, the appellation could be applied to something that didn't necessarily have to inform. This definition was extrapolated to general usage as something told or communicated, whether or not it made sense to the receiver. Now, the freedom engendered by such an amorphous definition has, as you might expect, encouraged its liberal deployment. It has become the single most important word of our decade, the suspense of our lives and our work. — Richard Saul Wurman

By definition it uses and plays and delights in time. It delights in the interlacing of chronologies and the consequences of that interlacing. And those have personal and psychological expressions in a character. Aside from other issues of writing, psychological characterization is what narrative can do best. — Chang-rae Lee

He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob
perhaps that is a safe definition of the character. — William Makepeace Thackeray

My definition of a character actor is - they never get the girl. — James Cromwell

The Enneagram is not a system of personality, as it is so often presented, but rather a definition of character fixation. The same character fixation can manifest across a full range of personalities. Jack Nicholson and Slobodan Milosevic have the same character fixation but different personalities. — Eli Jaxon-Bear

Going back is a nice way to give definition to each of the characters because they are so vastly different. I would never want them to get blended together. — Tatiana Maslany

Amazing how the most obvious things escape your notice. Maybe the truth is exactly the things you don't notice. Maybe the aim to see and tell the truth is inherently futile, a contradiction in terms, and it's exactly those things about oneself and the world that are invisible because they are woven into one's fabric that are the truth. Just like a person can't see his own eyes. You search and search and search, and the truth, by definition, is exactly that which you don't find. You don't see the truth, you are the truth. "Habits of attention are reflexes of the complete character of an individual." And how could you notice your own habits of attention? By writing. Well, at their most profound level? It doesn't make any difference. That is the point. It's like Zen. The truth is not straining for the truth, the truth is in effortlessness. The truth is in being, not trying. Aw hell, that doesn't leave much too chew on. — Richard Hell

My characters have nothing. I'm working with impotence, ignorance ... that whole zone of being that has always been set aside by artists as something unusable - something by definition incompatible with art. — Samuel Beckett

Writers shouldn't fall in love with their characters so much that they lose sight of what they're trying to accomplish. The idea is to write a whole story, a whole book. A writer has to be able to look at that story and see whether or not a character works, whether or not a character needs further definition. — Stephen Coonts

The definition of your life is you and your character. So define yourself in your own way. — Debasish Mridha

The way I see the job, my definition of it, is to create characters to the best of your ability and then fit into what's trying to be accomplished in the general framework of the film. I think that's whether you're doing this- even if you're doing musical theater. That's what I think an actors job is. I don't know. I like to think what an actors job is is to create characters. — Anton Yelchin

At one point, I worked up a list of five requirements for a superhero: superpowers, a costume, a code name, a mission, and a milieu. If the character had three out of the five, they were a superhero. But that's just my definition. — Kurt Busiek

I'm really curious about the memory of Nixon for people who grew up under Clinton. What do people remember of him? In his day, the definition of a conservative right-wing president is more like a centrist in our own time. He's also one of our funnier presidents - just a really good character to write about. — Austin Grossman

Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy. — Alexander Hamilton

Being' cannot be derived from higher concepts by definition, nor can it be presented through lower ones. But does this imply being no longer offers a problem? Not at all. We can infer only that 'Being' cannot have the character of an entity. Thus we cannot apply to Being the concept of 'definition' as presented in traditional logic, [ ... ] which, within certain limits, provides a justifiable way of characterizing 'entities'. — Martin Heidegger

Our easiest approach to a definition of any aspect of fiction is always by considering the sort of demand it makes on the reader. Curiosity for the story, human feelings and a sense of value for the characters, intelligence and memory for the plot. What does fantasy ask of us? It asks us to pay something extra. — E. M. Forster

Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire. It is a difficult balance to strike, but no definition of goodness can be complete without it. — Alan Dershowitz

I absolutely believe that what you sing and how you act when you're in this position, should be the definition of who you are and where your heart and character stands. — Cody Johnson

From what deep springs of character our personal philosophies issue, we cannot be sure. In philosophers themselves we seem always able to notice some deep internal correspondence between the man and his philosophy. Are our philosophies, then, merely the inevitable outcome of the body of fate and personal circumstance that is thrust upon each of us? Or are these beliefs the means by which we freely create ourselves as the persons we become? Here, at the very outset, the question of freedom already hovers in the background. — William Barrett