#character

When people really hate one another, the tension within them can sometimes make itself felt throughout a room, like atmospheric waves, first hot, then cold, wafted backwards and forwards as if in an invisible process of air conditioning, creating a pervasive physical disturbance. ↗

— Anthony Powell

#hatred #meetings #mood #music

To that point, he had always found the vicomtesse overflowing with friendly politeness, that sweet-flowing grace conferred by an aristocratic education, and which is never truly there unless it comes, automatically and unthinkingly, straight from the heart. [...] For anyone who had learned the social code, and Rastignac had absorbed it all in a flash, these words, that gesture, that look, that inflection in her voice, summed up all there was to know about the nature and the ways of men and women of her class. He was vividly aware of the iron hand underneath the velvet glove; the personality, and especially the self-centeredness, under the polished manners; the plain hard wood, under all the varnish. [...] Eugène had been entirely too quick to take this woman's word for her own kindness. Like all those who cannot help themselves, he had signed on the dotted line, accepting the delightful contract binding both benefactor and recipient, the very first clause of which makes clear that, as between noble souls, perfect equality must be forever maintained. Beneficience, which ties people together, is a heavenly passion, but a thoroughly misunderstood one, and quite as scarce as true love. Both stem from the lavish nature of great souls. ↗

— Honoré de Balzac

#character #hypocrisy #kind #kindness #people

Nature forgot to shade him off, I think... A little too boisterous--like the sea. A little too vehement--like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every colour scarlet. But I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him! ↗

— Charles Dickens

#loudness #nature

Understanding character is a vital part of the process of finding a relationship partner and developing a strong and vibrant relationship together. ↗

— Susanne M. Alexander

#relationship-advice #relationship

I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven. ↗

— Stephen King

#on-writing #stories #storytelling #storytelling

A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become. ↗

— Saul Bellow

#characterization #propaganda

That mess about judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin—that's some bullshit. Nobody has the right to judge anybody else. Period. If you ain't been in my skin, you ain't never gonna understand my character. ↗

— Emily Raboteau

#judge #judgement #skin-color #judgement

Minds that have withered into psychosis are far more terrifying than any character of fiction. ↗

— Christian Baloga

#bipolar #character #christian-baloga #crazy #emotional

Our relationship with literary characters, at least to those that exercise a certain attraction over us, rests in fact on a denial. We know perfectly well, on a conscious level, that these characters “do not exist,” or in any case do not exist in the same way as do the inhabitants of the real world. But things manifest in an entirely different way on the unconscious level, which is interested not in the ontological differences between worlds but in the effect they produce on the psyche. Every psychoanalyst knows how deeply a subject can be influenced, and even shaped, sometimes to the point of tragedy, by a fictional character and the sense of identification it gives rise to. This remark must first of all be understood as a reminder that we ourselves are usually fictional characters for other people […] ↗

— Pierre Bayard

#detective-criticism #fiction #psychology #reading #sherlock-holmes

Whenever there were parties, I wasn't invited because I began to be like that character. In a way, that contributed to the success of the performance. ↗

— F. Murray Abraham

#began #character #contributed #i #invited