Quotes & Sayings About Lack Of Character

People have character strength but they lack communication skills, and that undoubtedly affects the quality of relationships as well. — Stephen R. Covey

There aren't as many roles, and I think there's a lack of openness in casting an Asian character in a leading role or unless they're a stereotype. It's been hard. I've been able to play some non-stereotypical roles, which is great, but I have a lot of Asian actor friends who are struggling. — Kimiko Glenn

More writers fail from lack of character than from lack of intelligence. — Ezra Pound

Without entering here into a dissertation upon the historical romance, it may be said that in proper hands it has been and should continue to be one of the most valued and valuable expressions of the literary art. To render and maintain it so, however, it is necessary that certain well-defined limits should be set upon the licence which its writers are to enjoy; it is necessary that the work should be honest work; that preparation for it should be made by a sound, painstaking study of the period to be represented, to the end that a true impression may first be formed and then conveyed. Thus, considering how much more far-reaching is the novel than any other form of literature, the good results that must wait upon such endeavours are beyond question. The neglect of them - the distortion of character to suit the romancer's ends, the like distortion of historical facts, the gross anachronisms arising out of a lack of study, have done much to bring the historical romance into disrepute. — Rafael Sabatini

Politics is the art of persuasion. Good ideas die because due to a lack of charisma or character. — A.E. Samaan

I just think that unless you have that cohesiveness in the family unit, the male character tends to become very dominant, repressive and insensitive. So much of this comes also from a lack of education. — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Human existence begins when the lack of fixation of action by instincts exceeds a certain point; when the adaptation to nature loses its coercive character; when the way to act is no longer fixed by hereditarily given mechanisms. In other words, human existence and freedom are from the beginning inseparable. Freedom is here used not in its positive sense of "freedom to" but in its negative sense of "freedom from", namely freedom from instinctual determination of his actions. — Erich Fromm

The lack of wealth is easily repaired but the poverty of the soul is irreplaceable. — Michel De Montaigne

Some of the greatest actors on the planet are the most insecure people. Now I don't know if that insecurity necessarily equates to a lack of confidence. Some people are just very shy individuals. You give them a character to play and a script, and you put them in front of a camera or on a stage, and they just go. — Eric Dane

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character. — Oscar Levant

I like strong people. The ones who have gone through immense pain and hardened like a clay pot. They feel pain, but they smile. They faced problems and emerged victorious. Maybe, they lack materialistic things, but they are the ones with 'peace of mind' - one thing I long, everyone longs.
I like strong people. The ones who have peace of mind. The ones who know not having things is ok. — Saru Singhal

Humanity was never meant for mediocrity. Yet many among us are now, and will forever remain, limited by their profound lack of understanding. Some of us develop our minds and glimpse the wisdom of the ages. Others develop their muscles and embrace the strength, power and endurance only possible of a body that obeys the heart and mind without question. An even smaller group, look inside themselves to find the peace, compassion, humility and timeless strength of character that can only be attained through spirituality. An infinitesimally smaller minority develop the intellect, strengthen and dominate the body, and come to know the true nature of their spirit - thus finding a balance that comes as close to excellence as any mere mortal can ever hope to attain. — Richard Duarte

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me? — The Beatles

I've always been accused by my detractors of some sort of moral failure, cowardice, or even lack of humanity by not portraying the human form. I respond that I do better by portraying traces of character and intentions of human volition that no mug or body shot can ever exude. — Robert Polidori

The lack of moral character is the number one problem in the black community today — Jesse Lee Peterson

If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted. — Charles Horton Cooley

Warning: This read will cause lack of sleep! You wont want to put it down!

July 13, 2016 by Francine Baia
This was a long awaited novel in the Sword of the God series and it was most definitely well worth the wait. The author provides an all encompassing look into the inner thoughts and machinations of each character which is commanding. She tackles several serious subjects that are current in today's society, including PTSD and how it affects people differently and the devastation it causes on family. Several love stories are explored which keeps the readers on edge and wanting more. The integration of languages and cultures are seamless and readily understandable which bolsters the depth of the multiple storylines and at times is masterfully interlaced with comic relief. This is truly an enjoyable read that you will find difficult to put down. Anxiously anticipating the next installment! — Anna Erishkigal

Historically, it is traditional and habitual for us to be inadequately prepared. This is the combined result of a number factors, the character of which is only indicated: democracy, which tends to make everyone believe that he knows it all; the preponderance, inherent in democracy, of people whose real interest is in their own welfare as individuals; the glorification of our own victories in war and the corresponding ignorance of our defeats - and disgraces - and of their basic causes; the inability of the average individual to understand the cause and effect not only in foreign but domestic affairs, as well as his lack of interest in such matters. Added to these elements is the manner in which our representative form of government has developed as to put a premium on mediocrity and to emphasize the defects of the electorate already mentioned — Ernest J. King

Nor is faith meritorious; it is simply confidence in the goodness of God, and the lack of it is a reflection upon God's holy character. — A.W. Tozer

The average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul - desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would change. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic. — Truman Capote

Just because you're in the process of bettering yourself doesn't mean there won't be times when you make questionable choices, respond out of character, lack proper communication, or let negativity get the best of yourself. That's all a part of the process of becoming better. How else would you know what needs cleaning up if you don't stand in your mess every once in a while? — Emily Maroutian

Even the most beautiful girl in the world becomes unsightly without depth of character. — Ken Poirot

By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy-indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction. — William Osler

There are times when I consciously give the character something physical - a walk, the way he sits, how he talks, or his lack of physicality, which is like a physicality. — Michael Keaton

I never heard of anybody who admired the character of sheep. Even the gentlest human personalities in contact with them are annoyed by their lack of brains, courage and initiative, by their extraordinary ability to get themselves into uncomfortable or dangerous situations and then wait in inert helplessness for someone to rescue them. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Every day, strive to refine your contagious shine, and shake the nonsense offered by those who lack the will to polish-up from within. — T.F. Hodge

The problem with your company is not the economy, it is not the lack of opportunity, it is not your team. The problem is you. That is the bad news. The good news is, if you're the problem, you're also the solution. You're the one person you can change the easiest. You can decide to grow. Grow your abilities, your character, your education, and your capacity. You can decide who you want to be and get about the business of becoming that person. — Dave Ramsey

The battle of prayer is against two things in the earthlies: wandering thoughts and lack of intimacy with God's character as revealed in His word. Neither can be cured at once, but they can be cured by discipline. — Oswald Chambers

Quality of character doesn't make a leader, but the lack of it flaws the entire process. — Peter Drucker

The distinction between diseases of "brain" and "mind," between "neurological" problems and "psychological" or "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind. Diseases of the brain are seen as tragedies visited on people who cannot be blamed for their condition, while diseases of the mind, especially those that affect conduct and emotion, are seen as social inconveniences for which sufferers have much to answer. Individuals are to be blamed for their character flaws, defective emotional modulation, and so on; lack of willpower is supposed to be the primary problem. — Antonio R. Damasio

Artists with the lack of proper education and experience of working from life will copy whatever is visible on the photograph, without knowing what's underneath. As a result, instead of creating the in-depth and full of character portrait, they draw a mask with no soul. — Igor Babailov

A really useful quality to have as an actor is a lack of self-awareness. I try and get into the character's thinking, and some of them just aren't really that bothered about how they come across or aware of how they come across. — Monica Dolan

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper. — Charles Bukowski

I found that the experts in time management all agree that it's not time, nor lack of time, that's the problem. It's a misalignment of priorities or a misunderstanding of what matters. It could be a lack of depth on the part of the doer, a lack of inner character, or a neglect to pursue inner goals that really matter. — Katharine Grubb

Towards orthodox religion, father's own attitude remained one of tolerance. He looked upon the New Testament as the noble story of a human being which, because of ignorance and the lack of printing presses, had become exaggerated. He maintained that religions served their purpose; some people depended on them all their lives to make them honest. Others did not need to be so held in line. But subjection to any church was a reflection on strength and character. You should be able to get from yourself what you had to go go church for. — Margaret Sanger

Ince depression is a genetic biological illness, like diabetes, or low thyroid, it wasn't lack of character, laziness, or something I could "snap out of"-it would be like trying to snap out of a toothache. — Peter McWilliams

When posing for a photograph, spinsters should avoid looking desperate or deprived. A serene smile will show that your circumstances are by choice and not for lack of beauty or character. -Miss Gertrude Hasslebrink, 1878 — Margaret Brownley

Nearly all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians
lack of power to pronounce the syllable, "No." To be able to utter that word and live alone, are the only means to preserve one's freedom and one's character. — Nicolas Chamfort

There's a tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsibility and treat them as victims of social circumstance. You buy that, you pay with your soul. It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit gays, it's not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don't have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it. — Tom Robbins

The lack of predictability with television is something that's constantly changing what your perception of who you think your character is. — Lucy Liu

We today lack a theology of growth. And so we need to learn how we "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18). In particular, we need to learn to cooperate with "the means of grace" that God has ordained for the transformation of the human personality. Our participation in these God-ordained "means" will enable us increasingly to take into ourselves Christ's character and manner of life. — Douglas J. Moo

There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious. — John Lancaster Spalding

Don't let yourself be victimized by the age you live in. It's not the
times that will bring us down, any more than it's society. When you
put the blame on society, then you end up turning to society for the
solution. Just like those poor neurotics at the Care Fest. There's a
tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsiblity and treat
them as victims of social circumstance. You buy that, you pay with
your soul. It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit
gays, it's not whites who limit black. what limits people is lack of
character. What limites people is that they don't have the fucking
nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.
Yuck ... It's a wonderful time to be alive. As long as one has enough
dynamite.
pg. 116-117 — Tom Robbins

Today's anti-immigration debates lack essential perspective about the nature of migration, the character of the migrant and the imperatives that drive the world to the City....It does not and cannot stop the Great Migration, for one simple reason: access to the raw potential of urban advantage cannot be entirely controlled. — Jeb Brugmann

I can hear people in American society saying, "Oh, you just like that subservient kind of woman in Asia who waits on her man hand and foot." Nothing could be more of a misconception. Many Asian women I've met, surely the most interesting ones. . . have strengths of character that most of us in America - male or female-simply lack. — Richard Terrill

I think when you're working with a character that another writer is acting as - for lack of a better word - custodian of, your obligation as a professional is to not do anything that violates that 'primary' take. — Greg Rucka

Formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man! He blew no trumpet in the market-place, Nor in the church with hypocritic face Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace; Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will What others talked of while their hands were still. — John Greenleaf Whittier

Great words, golden promises, built up exploits plus lack of character equals low down dirty fraud. — Jayce O'Neal

In today's ambiguous world, character means despotism, tyranny, absolute intolerance. At last it is time to admire a lack of character, inner weakness. Our epoch is that of noble doubts, blessed uncertainty, sacred hypersensitivity, divine wishy-washiness. — Tadeusz Konwicki

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic admiration. — Maya Angelou

One of the best strengtheners of character and developers of stamina ... is to assume the part you wish to play; to assert stoutly the possession of whatever you lack. — Orison Swett Marden

What the present day greeders don't understand ... is that your character, lack of integrity, low morals, no ethics and devious actions are being RECORED indelibly for the global public to view for next few hundred years ... on the internet TATOO!.
Your childrens', childrens', childrens' childrens' childrens' childrens' childrens - will read on the web of your low-intelligence, devious thievery, corruption, and inept leadership.. And they will cry with shame ... because their ancestors seemed to behave no better than greedy Graboons.
We need to Rethink leadership — Tony Dovale

It is tragic that the Fuehrer should have the whole nation behind him with the single exception of the Army generals. In my opinion it is only by action that they can now atone for their faults of lack of character and discipline. — Alfred Jodl

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

It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy - from lack of character. — Dag Hammarskjold

People buy a game because they like the game and they want to play the game. And there are certain characters in games that people like, obviously. I don't know if a certain character's voice or lack of a certain character's voice can cause somebody to buy or not buy a game. — Michael Gough

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Such is the strange situation in which modern philosophy finds itself. No former age was ever in such a favourable position with regard to the sources of our knowledge of human nature. Psychology, ethnology, anthropology, and history have amassed an astoundingly rich and constantly increasing body of facts. Our technical instruments for observation and experimentation have been immensely improved, and our analyses have become sharper and more penetrating.
We appear, nonetheless, not yet to have found a method for the mastery and organization of this material. When compared with our own abundance the past may seem very poor. But our wealth of facts is not necessarily a wealth of thoughts. Unless we succeed in finding a clue of Ariadne to lead us out of this labyrinth, we can have no real insight into the general character of human culture; we shall remain lost in a mass of disconnected and disintegrated data which seem to lack all conceptual unity. — Ernst Cassirer

If the Christian dogmas of a revengeful God, universal sinfulness, election by divine grace and the danger of eternal damnation were true, it would be a sign of weak-mindedness and lack of character not to become a priest, apostle or hermit and, in fear and trembling, to work solely on one's own salvation; it would be senseless to lose sight of ones eternal advantage for the sake of temporal comfort. If we may assume that these things are at any rate believed true, then the everyday Christian cuts a miserable figure; he is a man who really cannot count to three, and who precisely on account of his spiritual imbecility does not deserve to be punished so harshly as Christianity promises to punish him.
from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human — Friedrich Nietzsche

A mattoid is a miscreant who seeks to elevate himself by destroying society. Examples include the Rothschilds, David Rockefeller, Franklin Roosevelt, Meyer Lansky, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Hamilton, and Josef Stalin. Often mattoids are of high intelligence, tainted geniuses, despite their flawed character and lack of any morality. — Oliver Cromwell

A slouching posture tends to suggest a certain laziness of character as well as a lack of interest in others. Whereas an upright position can confirm a sense of self-possession and a quality of engagement. — Amor Towles

Research from these new disciplines has revealed that trauma produces actual physiological changes, including a recalibration of the brain's alarm system, an increase in stress hormone activity, and alterations in the system that filters relevant information from irrelevant. We now know that trauma compromises the brain area that communicates the physical, embodied feeling of being alive. These changes explain why traumatized individuals become hypervigilant to threat at the expense of spontaneously engaging in their day-to-day lives. They also help us understand why traumatized people so often keep repeating the same problems and have such trouble learning from experience. We now know that their behaviors are not the result of moral failings or signs of lack of willpower or bad character - they are caused by actual changes in the brain. This — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean, there's always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason. — Roald Dahl

Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money. — Barbara Ehrenreich

What a director really does is set the emotional temperature and the mood and the level, amount, or lack of, distance between the action and the character, and the character and the audience. — James Gray

On consideration, it is not surprising that Darwin's finches should recognize their own kind primarily by beak characters. The beak is the only prominent specific distinction, and it features conspicuously both in attacking behaviour, when the birds face each other and grip beaks, and also in courtship, when food is passed from the beak of the male to the beak of the female. Hence though the beak differences are primarily correlated with differences in food, secondarily they serve as specific recognition marks, and the birds have evolved behaviour patterns to this end. — David Lack

Kafka was a master at the gruesome task of picturing people who do not use their potentialities and therefore lose their sense of being persons. The chief character in The Trial and in The Castle has no name - he is identified only by an initial, a mute symbol of one's lack of identity in one's own right. — Rollo May

He was right: not about her playing him, or about her laughing at him, but certainly about her carelessness, about her casual disregard for how he would feel if he found out, and about the stunning lack of depth it exposed in her character. — Michael Callahan

The roles I was lucky enough to get were real stretches for me: usually a character who was older, or a little weird, or whatever. And it was hard, not just for the lack of work but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you. — Kathy Bates

Love of goodness without love of learning degenerates into simple-mindedness. Love of knowledge without love of learning degenerates into utter lack of principle. Love of faithfulness without love of learning degenerates into injurious disregard of consequences. Love of uprightness without love of learning degenerates into harshness. Love of courage without love of learning degenerates into insubordination. Love of strong character without love of learning degenerates into mere recklessness. — Confucius

Solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency. Lack of imagination, hypocrisy. These qualities characterize the middle classes in everycountry, but in England they are national characteristics. — E. M. Forster

Beware of those who are too focused with polishing and beautifying their outer shells. They lack true substance to understand that genuine beauty is reflected from the heart that resides inside. — Suzy Kassem

No amount of organization and time management will compensate for a lack of Christian character, not when it comes to this great calling of glory through good - bringing glory to God by doing good to others. — Tim Challies

The deepest-lying and most pervasive part of character is disposition: it accompanies us everywhere, and shows itself in all we do. It is the attitude of the soul toward life, the way in which we accept our situation and our daily experiences. On the inner side it gives color and tone to our own conscious life: on the outer side it pervades and modifies our conduct toward others and our reactions to events. A good disposition is indispensable to good character, though of course not all of character; without it one cannot hope for perfection; even with it one may fail through lack of higher elements. It is a sort of foundation layer. — Edward O. Sisson

Evil denotes the lack of good. Not every absence of good is an evil, for absence may be taken either in a purely negative or in aprivative sense. Mere negation does not display the character of evil, otherwise nonexistents would be evil and moreover, a thing would be evil for not possessing the goodness of something else, which would mean that man is bad for not having the strength of a lion or the speed of a wild goat. But what is evil is privation; in this sense blindness means the privation of sight. — Thomas Aquinas

When people lose faith in the natural goodness of the human character, the lack of trust in spiritual goodness, that is one reason why corruption has become so widespread today. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people. — Ernesto Che Guevara

But as soon as a man, through lack of character, takes refuge in doctrine, as soon as crime reasons about itself, it multiplies like reason itself and assumes all the aspects of the syllogism. Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law. — Albert Camus

My hope is that people will be repulsed by the character's complete lack of ethics and obsession with consumerism - that's what I was saying about the difference between the character's message and the film's message. — Christian Bale

Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack. — Flannery O'Connor

Lack of credibility slays your character — Bernard Kelvin Clive

The gym exposes deficiencies in our bodies' strength and stamina - and appearance. You can wear all kinds of daytime clothes that hide or minimize aspects of your body that you would like to be less visible to the eye. But in the gym, you cannot hide them. There you and your coach (and unfortunately everyone around you) can see where you bulge where you shouldn't. It's an incentive to get to work. And so this metaphor tells us that when life is going along just fine, the flaws in our character can be masked and hidden from others and from ourselves. But when troubles and difficulties hit, we are suddenly in "God's gymnasium" - we are exposed. Our inner anxieties, our hair-trigger temper, our unrealistic regard of our own talents, our tendency to lie or shade the truth, our lack of self-discipline - all of these things come out. — Timothy J. Keller

I learned a long time ago that you don't have to go around using bad language and trying to hurt people to show how macho you are. That stuff won't get you anywhere, it just shows lack of vocabulary and character. — Bobby Bowden

Many of the seminal social issues of our time - poverty, lack of education, human trafficking, war and torture, domestic abuse - can track their way to our theology of, or beliefs about, women, which has its roots in what we believe about the nature, purposes, and character of God. — Sarah Bessey

Wilhelm Reich identified "armor" as the sum total of typical character attitudes, which an individual develops as a blocking against his emotional excitations, resulting in rigidity of the body, lack of emotional contact, "deadness". Functionally identical to muscular armor (chronic muscular spasms) — Wilhelm Reich

As a novelist, I cannot occupy myself with "characters," or at any rate central ones, who lack panache, in one or another sense, who would be incapable of a major action or a major passion, or who have not a touch of the ambiguity, the ultimate unaccountability, the enlarging mistiness of persons "in history." History, as more austerely I now know it, is not romantic. But I am. — Elizabeth Bowen

Without core convictions to help us navigate, we stand uneasily on shifting sand, and we lack the solid footing with which to stage a life of principle and character. Today is a call to biblical conviction ... What is needed today is a battalion of believers who follow Christ and stand for Him and His truth. — Dennis Rainey

Character is a lack of doubt, character is stubbornly persevering in an intention no matter how senseless it is, character is a lack of imagination, character is inborn dullness, character is the misfortune of humanity. — Tadeusz Konwicki

Your responsibility is to not question God's actions or what looks like a lack of action. Your obligation is to count on God's character. — Jim George

The key is to remember a sex scene is a scene of dramatic action and psychological development. You need to pay attention to emotion and to a character's self-awareness or lack of self-awareness. — K.M. Soehnlein

However, this sceptic had one fanaticism. This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. To whom did this anarchical scoffer unite himself in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what manner had Enjolras subjugated him? By his ideas? No. By his character. A phenomenon which is often observable. A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors. That which we lack attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man. The dwarf adores the drum-major. The toad always has his eyes fixed on heaven. Why? In order to watch the bird in its flight. Grantaire, in whom writhed doubt, loved to watch faith soar in Enjolras. He had need of Enjolras. That chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard, candid nature charmed him, without his being clearly aware of it, and without the idea of explaining it to himself having occurred to him. — Victor Hugo

He had to compose an "autobiography" that proved that he had been brought to his present predicament by a "lack of inner character," and moral perversity and mental sickness that had made him unre-ceptive to Communism. He — Dumitru Bacu

On his thirteenth birthday he had seen a film in which the central character was a painter who, unable to sell his work, grew cold and hungry as he went from one unsuccessful interview to the next; eventually he had become a vagrant, sleeping in the streets of the city where once he had walked in hope. Hawksmoor left the cinema in a mood of profound, terrified apprehension and, from that time, he was filled with a sense of time passing and with the fear that he might be left discarded on its banks. The fear had not left him, although now he could no longer remember from where it came: he looked back on his earlier life without curiosity, since it seemed to lack intrinsic interest, and when he looked forward he saw the same steady attainment of goals without any joy in their attainment. For him, the state of happiness was simply the state of not suffering and, if he cared for anything, it was for oblivion. — Peter Ackroyd

California, that advance post of our civilization, with its huge aircraft factories, TV and film studios, automobile way of life ... its flavourless cosmopolitanism, its charlatan philosophies and religions, its lack of anything old and well-tried rooted in tradition and character. — J.B. Priestley

If I say I do not believe in faeries or elves or trolls, does this imply that I have a set of beliefs and a lifestyle that adheres to this lack of belief? NO, IT ONLY IMPLIES that I do not believe in faeries, elves and trolls. So one cannot extrapolate morality, philosophy, cosmology, character, political party, or any other thing of that sort from the mere lack of belief in one other thing. — Kelli Jae Baeli

We just worked hard to not just get things right and authentic, but also to make it consistent and visually right. For instance, there are colours that aren't in the film that would have been there in reality. I think part of the look of the film not only has to do with the way it's shot and lit, but also the lack of certain colours that give it a softness which really suits it because there's more focus on the characters. For instance, there's no yellow at all until we get to Miss Stubbs' flat at the very end. — Lone Scherfig

His wise parent disapproved of this uncatly conduct; it indicated a certain lack of character, and no good would come of it. By her own example she tried to guide him. When dinner was served she gave the plate a haughty sniff and walked away, no matter how tempting the dish. That was the way it was done by any self-respecting feline. In a minute or two she returned and condescended to dine, but never with open enthusiasm. — Lilian Jackson Braun

As the trial opened, most of London had thoughts of little else. The king was often otherwise engaged; he was spending increasing amounts of time with his new mistress, the very beautiful and willing Barbara Villiers, with whom he was totally infatuated. It was said that their relationship 'did so disorder him that often he was not master of himself nor capable of minding business, which in so critical a time, required great application'.3 Hyde, a fastidious man, found Charles's philandering a considerable irritation. He was also infuriated by the king's general lack of attention to matters of state; but Charles's inattentiveness and apparent laziness were traits developed over long years of exile and futility and were to prove fixed within his character. — Don Jordan