Mute characters in a play.
Woman's faith, and woman's trust,
Write the characters in dust. [ Sir Walter Scott ]
Characters are developed, and never change. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]
It deserves with characters of brass,
A forted residence against the tooth of time
And razure of oblivion. [ William Shakespeare ]
Midnight hags.
By force of potent spells, of bloody characters,
And conjurations, horrible to hear,
Call fiends and spectres from the yawning deep,
And set the ministers of hell at work. [ Rowe ]
Loud-dressing men and women have also loud characters. [ Haliburton ]
It is to be lamented that great characters are seldom without a blot. [ George Washington ]
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance. [ Samuel Butler ]
Characters never change. Opinions alter, - characters are only developed. [ Disraeli ]
What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables. [ Thackeray ]
The most careful reasoning characters are very often the most easily abashed. [ Mme. de Stael ]
Actions, looks, words, steps from the alphabet by which you may spell characters. [ Lavater ]
Fear and sorrow are the true characters and inseparable companions of most melancholy. [ Burton ]
Credulity is perhaps a weakness almost inseparable from eminently truthful characters. [ Tuckerman ]
Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence. [ Richter ]
The most striking characters are sometimes the product of an infinity of little accidents. [ Danton ]
All men are like in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ. [ Bovee ]
The seal of suffering impressed upon our destiny announces in clear characters our high calling. [ De Gerando ]
Our weaknesses are the indigenous produce of our characters; but our strength is the forced fruit. [ Lady Blessington ]
Affliction is the school in which great virtues are acquired, in which great characters are formed. [ Hannah More ]
Every man has three characters: that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has. [ A. Karr ]
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their characters, and my enemies for their brains. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
Avarice is the most opposite of all characters to that of God Almighty, whose alone it is to give and not receive. [ Shenstone ]
It is the greatest invention man has ever made, this of marking down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters. [ Carlyle ]
You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good, and whose enemies are characters decidedly bad. [ Callenberg ]
There are principles excellent for certain firm and energetic characters, which would be worth nothing for those of an inferior order. [ Chamfort ]
Conflict, which rouses up the best and highest powers in some characters, in others not only jars the whole being, but paralyzes the faculties. [ Mrs. Jameson ]
Two gifts are indispensable to the dramatic poet; one is the power of forgetting himself, the other is the power of remembering his characters. [ Stoddart ]
The science of women, as that of men, must be limited according to their powers: the difference of their characters ought to limit that of their studies. [ Fenelon ]
Everything made by man may be destroyed by man; there are no ineffaceable characters except those engraved by nature; and nature makes neither princes nor rich men nor great lords. [ Rousseau ]
The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken. [ Macaulay ]
Office of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard. [ Macaulay ]
There never has been a nation that has not looked upon woman as the companion or the consolation of man, or as the sacred instrument of his life, and that has not honored her in those characters. [ A. de Musset ]
We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and insensibly approximate to the characters we most admire. In this way, a generous habit of thought and of action carries with it an incalculable influence. [ Bovee ]
Nothing affects the heart like that which is purely from itself, and of its own nature; such as the beauty of sentiments, the grace of actions, the turn of characters, and the proportions and features of a human mind. [ Shaftesbury ]
Time has a doomsday book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures, faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say. [ Emerson ]
Every common dauber writes rascal and villain under his pictures, because the pictures themselves have neither character nor resemblance. But the works of a master require no index. His features and coloring are taken from nature. The impression they make is immediate and uniform; nor is it possible to mistake his characters. [ Junius ]
The works of nature and the works of revelation display religion to mankind in characters so large and visible that those who are not quite blind may in them see and read the first principles and most necessary parts of it, and from thence penetrate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. [ Locke ]
The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man's general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters turns upon one shilling. [ Chesterfield ]
Consistent characters are those which in social intercourse are easy, sure, and gentle. We do not clash with them, and they are never wanting nor contradictory to themselves; their stability incites confidence, their frankness induces self-surrendering openness. We feel at ease with them, we are not offended at their superiority, doubtless we admire them less, but we also hardly dream of feeling envious of them, and they seem almost to disdain malignity by the peaceful influence of their presence. [ Degerando ]
I put myself, my experiences, my observations, my heart and soul into my work. I press my soul upon the white paper. The writer who does this may have any style, he or she will find the hearts of their readers. Writing a book involves, not a waste, but a great expenditure of vital force. Yet I can assure you I have written the last lines of most of my stories with tears. The characters of my own creation had become dear to me. I could not bear to bid them good-bye and send them away from me into the wide world. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]
All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf, their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow or along the ground, but prints, in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of its fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens, the ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object covered over with hints which speak to the intelligent. [ Emerson ]