Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes

Character is not the enemy of self-expression and personal freedom, it is their necessary precondition.

Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and Responsibility of our existence.

One should not wish anyone disagreeable conditions of life; but for him who is involved in them by chance, they are touchstones of characters and of the most decisive value to man.

I try to serve the character all the time; this one took a lot of work and was consuming. It's like climbing up a ladder and sometimes you're afraid to face yourself so you make excuses; you avoid going to the top of the ladder and look in the mirror.

There is a time in every life when paths are chosen, character is forged. I could have chosen a different path. But I didn’t. I failed myself.

Playing our parts. Yes, we all have to do that and from childhood on, I have found that my own character has been much harder to play worthily and far harder at times to comprehend than any of the roles I have portrayed.

It is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.

Education is character development, harmonious completion of human personality. But what the state accomplishes in this field is dull drill, extinction of natural feeling, narrowing of the spiritual field of vision, destruction of all the deeper elements of character in man. The state can train subjects...but it can never develop free men who take their affairs into their own hands; for independent thought is the greatest danger that it has to fear.

Doctor Strange is an origin story so there's a certain room for me improving as well as the character improving.

Man needs what's worst in him in order to achieve what's best in him.

For 15 years, I've been playing the same character - which is myself - and I'm bored with 'myself'.

There is a curious thing that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character... Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl.

Liberty may be an uncomfortable blessing unless you know what to do with it. That is why so many freed slaves returned to their masters, why so many emancipated women are only too glad to give up the racket and settle down. For between announcing that you will live your own life, and the living of it lie the real difficulties of any awakening.

Writing stories, adopting other characters, making up fantastic stories and tales, this is a way of perhaps enhancing who I am. Writing stories takes a commonplace old life and makes it all somehow more interesting. And hopefully I can do that in a way that touches a lot of people in their lives, too.

Every test successfully met is rewarded by some growth in intuitive knowledge, strengthening of character, or initiation into a higher consciousness.

This is my life; these are my fingerprints; I'm unique; this is what I want to do. You worry about your own front porch and what's happening in your own world.

Talent develops in quiet, alone; character is sharpened in the torrent of the world.

The history of mankind is his character.

Human character is never found "to enter into its glory," except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.

You say the character [of Leo Bloom] was meek and insecure, and you could've been describing me as well. I was a very shy person in those days, and working with Zero [Mostel], who was bigger than life, helped me grow. Zero was a strong influence on me.

The choices that make a significant difference in our lives are the tough ones. They're not often fun or easy, but they're the ones we have to make, and each is a deliberate step toward better understanding who we really are.

It took me years to learn that character is fate and that no one can be made over.

I think you always take away a little bit of a character with you, and it kinda like hangs on you for a bit, and then as time kind of goes and wears off a little bit.

Therefore the superior man is watchful over himself, when he is alone.

Our characters are the result of our conduct.