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The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back.
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Abigail Van Buren
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I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.
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Marilyn Monroe
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The Seven Social Sins are:
Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.
From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.
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Frederick Lewis Donaldson
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I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.
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Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
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Top 15 Things Money Canβt Buy
Time. Happiness. Inner Peace. Integrity. Love. Character. Manners. Health. Respect. Morals. Trust. Patience. Class. Common sense. Dignity.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.
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Maya Angelou
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Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
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Kahlil Gibran
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Sometimes, when I have to do something I don't want to do, I pretend I'm a character from a book. It's easier to know what they would do.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.
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Tahereh Mafi (Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1))
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Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.
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Anne Frank
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Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.
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Martin Luther King Jr.
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If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?
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Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
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I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.
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Joss Whedon
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All humans make mistakes. What determines a person's character aren't the mistakes we make. It's how we take those mistakes and turn them into lessons rather than excuses.
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Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
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Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.
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Henry David Thoreau
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...her dearest friends are characters in books.
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Sarah J. Maas (Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3))
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Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.
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August Wilson
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I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
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Oscar Wilde
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Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?
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J.M. Coetzee
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Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses.
Focus on your character, not your reputation.
Focus on your blessings, not your misfortunes.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness.
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R.J. Palacio (Wonder (Wonder, #1))
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People come, people go β theyβll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, complete with new characters and adventures. Then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Rescue)
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One can acquire everything in solitude except character.
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Stendhal (Five Short Novels of Stendhal)
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In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
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Maya Angelou
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Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
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John Wooden
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Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters
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Albert Einstein
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People tend to overestimate my character," I say quietly. "They think that because I'm small, or a girl, or a Stiff, I can't possibly be cruel. But they're wrong.
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Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
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If you want to find out what a man is to the bottom, give him power. Any man can stand adversity β only a great man can stand prosperity. It is the glory of Abraham Lincoln that he never abused power only on the side of mercy
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Robert G. Ingersoll
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You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
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Helen Keller
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Itβs a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.
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Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
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Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?
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Cornelia Funke
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It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them β the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.
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David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)
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O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.
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Albert Camus (LβΓ©tΓ©)
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I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
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Martin Luther King Jr.
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In books and in life, you need to read several pages before someone's true character is revealed.
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Gail Carson Levine
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You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.
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Paul McCartney
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Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemnβand most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
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Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends & Influence People)
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Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
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C.S. Lewis
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The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
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Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)
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People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man's true character comes out when he's drunk.
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Charlie Chaplin
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When you find a man you wish to marry, Tessa, remember this: You will know what kind of man he is not by the things he says, but by the things he does.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.
Find a girl who reads. Youβll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. Sheβs the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? Thatβs the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.
Sheβs the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because sheβs kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the authorβs making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyceβs Ulysses sheβs just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
Itβs easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, sheβs going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. Sheβll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time sheβs sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasnβt burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then youβre better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
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Rosemarie Urquico
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Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.
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Abraham Lincoln
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I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
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Albert Einstein
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And if you insist on continuing to make assumptions about my character, Iβll advise you only this: assume you will always be wrong.
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Tahereh Mafi (Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3))
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In youth, it was a way I had,
To do my best to please.
And change, with every passing lad
To suit his theories.
But now I know the things I know
And do the things I do,
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you.
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Dorothy Parker (The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker)
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Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
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Arthur Schopenhauer (The Basis of Morality (Dover Philosophical Classics))
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Character β the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life β is the source from which self-respect springs.
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Joan Didion (On Self-Respect)
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You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.
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Richard P. Feynman (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character)
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Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
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Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
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In the end you should always do the right thing even if it's hard.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Last Song)
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Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot.
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S.M. Stirling
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Grudges are for those who insist that they are owed something; forgiveness, however, is for those who are substantial enough to move on.
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Criss Jami (SalomΓ©: In Every Inch In Every Mile)
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This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when itβs just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be.
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David Levithan (Every Day (Every Day, #1))
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Can officially confirm that the way to a man's heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him.
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Helen Fielding (Bridget Jonesβs Diary (Bridget Jones, #1))
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To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.
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Criss Jami
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It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
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Mark Twain
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All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.
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Sophocles (Antigone (The Theban Plays, #3))
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I can't decide whether I'm a good girl wrapped up in a bad girl, or if I'm a bad girl wrapped up in a good girl. And that's how I know I'm a woman!
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C. JoyBell C.
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All cruelty springs from weakness.
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Seneca (Seneca's Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency)
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To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.
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Gabriel GarcΓa MΓ‘rquez (Love in the Time of Cholera)
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Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.
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Luigi Pirandello (Six Characters in Search of an Author)
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I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.
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Abraham Lincoln
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It is better to be alone than in bad company.
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George Washington
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To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
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Theodore Roosevelt
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Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
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Seneca
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Tessa craned her head back to look at Will. βYou know that feeling,β she said, βwhen you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage and you cannot let go or turn the course aside.β His blue eyes were dark with understanding β of course Will would understand β and she hurried on. βI feel now as if the same is happening, only not to characters on a page but to my own beloved friends and companions. I do not want to sit by while tragedy comes for us. I would turn it aside, only I struggle to discover how that might be done.β
βYou fear for Jem,β Will said.
βYes,β she said. βAnd I fear for you, too.β
βNo,β Will said, hoarsely. βDonβt waste that on me, Tess.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3))
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The measure of a man is what he does with power.
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Plato
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A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.
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Arthur Conan Doyle (The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #9))
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
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Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)
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Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.
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Jennifer Weiner
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If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
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There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome."
"And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody."
"And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.
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Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
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All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.
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Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)
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I'm unpredictable, I never know where I'm going until I get there, I'm so random, I'm always growing, learning, changing, I'm never the same person twice. But one thing you can be sure of about me; is I will always do exactly what I want to do.
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C. JoyBell C.
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You know that feeling,β she said, βwhen you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage and you cannot let go or turn the course aside.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3))
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I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul.
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JosΓ© N. Harris
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What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.
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AnaΓ―s Nin (The Diary of AnaΓ―s Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934)
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Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end.
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Salman Rushdie (The Ground Beneath Her Feet)
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What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.
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A.A. Milne
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We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.
I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.
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Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient)
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The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.
These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...
Remember, to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.
Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.
Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.
Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person might not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.
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Bob Moorehead (Words Aptly Spoken)
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If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless.
If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next.
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Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)
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I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yieldingβ certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.
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Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
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No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.
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Orson F. Whitney
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A SMALL PIECE OF TRUTH
I do not carry a sickle or scythe.
I only wear a hooded black robe when it's cold.
And I don't have those skull-like facial features you seem to enjoy pinning on me from a distance. You want to know what I truly look like? I'll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue.
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Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
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Why do I read?
I just can't help myself.
I read to learn and to grow, to laugh
and to be motivated.
I read to understand things I've never
been exposed to.
I read when I'm crabby, when I've just
said monumentally dumb things to the
people I love.
I read for strength to help me when I
feel broken, discouraged, and afraid.
I read when I'm angry at the whole
world.
I read when everything is going right.
I read to find hope.
I read because I'm made up not just of
skin and bones, of sights, feelings,
and a deep need for chocolate, but I'm
also made up of words.
Words describe my thoughts and what's
hidden in my heart.
Words are alive--when I've found a
story that I love, I read it again and
again, like playing a favorite song
over and over.
Reading isn't passive--I enter the
story with the characters, breathe
their air, feel their frustrations,
scream at them to stop when they're
about to do something stupid, cry with
them, laugh with them.
Reading for me, is spending time with a
friend.
A book is a friend.
You can never have too many.
β
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Gary Paulsen (Shelf Life: Stories by the Book)
β
Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since β on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!
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Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
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There were five others before they got to him. He smiled a little when his turn came. His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. βMy name is Augustus Waters,β he said. βIβm seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but Iβm just here today at Isaacβs request.β
βAnd how are you feeling?β asked Patrick.
βOh, Iβm grand.β Augustus Waters smiled with a corner of his mouth. βIβm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.
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John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
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Did you ever want to set someone's head on fire, just to see what it looked like? Did you ever stand in the street and think to yourself, I could make that nun go blind just by giving her a kiss? Did you ever lay out plans for stitching babies and stray cats into a Perfect New Human? Did you ever stand naked surrounded by people who want your gleaming sperm, squirting frankincense, soma and testosterone from every pore? If so, then you're the bastard who stole my drugs Friday night. And I'll find you. Oh, yes.
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Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Vol. 5: Lonely City)
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Fatβ is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her.
I mean, is βfatβ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is βfatβ worse than βvindictiveβ, βjealousβ, βshallowβ, βvainβ, βboringβ or βcruelβ? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? Iβm not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brainβ¦
I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadnβt seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? βYouβve lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!β
βWell,β I said, slightly nonplussed, βthe last time you saw me Iβd just had a baby.β
What I felt like saying was, βIβve produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Arenβt either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?β But no β my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!
Iβve got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I donβt want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; Iβd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny β a thousand things, before βthinβ. And frankly, Iβd rather they didnβt give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons.
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J.K. Rowling
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For several years, I had been bored. Not a whining, restless child's boredom (although I was not above that) but a dense, blanketing malaise. It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasΓ©: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.
It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.
And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.
It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else.
I would have done anything to feel real again.
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Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)