“My characters are who they are. For years, people have written and asked me to let Margaret go through menopause. And it’s like, ‘Hey guys! Margaret is 12 and she is going to stay 12. That’s who she is.'”
Judy Blume
more infosource: “At 80, Judy Blume Reflects On Feminism, #MeToo And Keeping Margaret 12,” NPR, February 12, 2018.
category: character, fiction, YA novel
medium: interview
“I have a respect for people who do things with their brains and with their hands, who are not afraid of hard physical and mental work. I respect, too, people who are unpretentious yet mannerly, considerate and honest, forthright yet kind and tactful. I dislike display and foolish expenditure in the sense of what Veblen called ‘conspicuous waste,’ that is, spending to impress those who have less, as well as to impress associates. I dislike chi-chi.”
Amy Vanderbilt
more infosource: “Introduction to the Original 1952 Edition,” in The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette: A Guide to Contemporary Living, revised and expanded by Letitia Baldridge (New York: Doubleday, 1978), xvii.
category: character, etiquette, money, respect, work
medium: Etiquette guide
via: Dorothy Ball!“Take things more easily. Don’t ask yourself so much whether this or that is good for you. Don’t question your conscience so much—it will get out of tune like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions. Don’t try so much to form your character—it’s like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose. Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself.”
Henry James
more infosource: The Portrait of a Lady (New York: Bantam, 2007), [Bantam Classic reissue], 223.
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category: advice, character, conscience, school of life
medium: Fiction
via: The Bronze Medal“He had reached that moment in life, different for each one of us, when a man abandons himself to his demon or to his genius, following a mysterious law which bids him either to destroy or outdo himself.”
Marguerite Yourcenar
more infosource: Memoirs of Hadrian (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 71.
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category: character, decision, life, turning point
medium: fiction
notes: quoted by Mary Karr in her Twitter feed
“Be as good as it is in your nature to be.”
Robert Frost
more infosource: June 3, 1920 letter to Louis Untermeyer, in The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 108.
medium: Letter
“It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to ‘just this once,’ based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.”
Clayton M. Christensen
more infosource: “How Will You Measure Your Life?,” Harvard Business Review, July 1, 2010.
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category: belief, character, integrity, principle, value
medium: magazine article
via: Christina Lowery“It’s our choices, Harry, that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
J. K. Rowling
more infosource: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (New York: Scholastic, 1999), 333.
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category: ability, character, choice, identity
medium: fiction
via: Louise Buckley“You may depend upon it, that a slight contrast of character is very material to happiness in marriage.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
more infosource: The Table Talk and Omniana of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: Oxford University Press, 1917), 59.
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category: character, happiness, marriage, partnership
medium: nonfiction
character