279 Personality Quotes

I'm still a shy person. I've learned to put that aside on certain occasions. I have to. It's part of my job.

I'm an extremist, I have to deal with my own extreme personality, and I walk the fine line of wanting to die and wanting to be the ruler of it all.

Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.

Actresses are such very dull people off the stage. We are only delightful and brilliant when we are doing what we are told to do. Off stage we are awful chumps.

Men are basically smart or dumb and lazy or ambitious. The dumb and ambitious ones are dangerous and I get rid of them. The dumb and lazy ones I give mundane duties. The smart ambitious ones I put on my staff. The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders.

Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.

I want to resume the life of a shy person.

Jim Morrison was a well-built boy, larger than average, and young enough to maintain the engorged silent connection right through the residue of chemicals.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.

I did not care for Wagner. My tastes are more classical. Der Fuhrer had no musical taste and liked Wagner because of the bombastic Teutonic glories.

A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.

I'm not hard to get along with.

Strangers who have seen Shaw face to face are wont to report their surprise at his gentleness and consideration, his willingness to listen and his complete lack of pose.

I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.

The real me is a southern girl with her Levis on and an open heart. Wish I could save the world, like I was super girl.

I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.

I was a peaceful sedentary man, a lover of a quiet life, with no appetite for perils and commotions. But I was beginning to realise that I was very obstinate.

Personality is more important than beauty, but imagination is more important than both of them.

I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.

I'm actually a softie. Tough guys get killed too early... I've got a full head of hair and don't wear eyeglasses.

I know of nothing more exciting than war.

Nervous and excitable persons need to talk a great deal, by way of letting off their steam.

One of the problems, hanging out with me, is that I can turn any topic into a toxic horror story. I've lost two girlfriends and a job by reading an ingredients label out loud, with annotations, at the wrong time.

I was shy as a child. Now I'm not really shy any more, unless I'm with shy people. I find it contagious and I don't know what to say. But I don't think shyness is something one should feel apologetic about.

I've been accused of being aloof. I'm not. I'm just wary.

Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough.

Prep school, public school, university: these now tedious influences standardize English autobiography, giving the educated Englishman the sad if fascinating appearance of a stuffed bird of sly and beady eye in some old seaside museum. The fixation on school has become a class trait. It manifests itself as a mixture of incurious piety and parlour game.

Until a character becomes a personality it cannot be believed. Without personality, the character may do funny or interesting things, but unless people are able to identify themselves with the character, its actions will seem unreal. And without personality, a story cannot ring true to the audience.

The life and ventures of Mickey Mouse have been closely bound up with my own personal and professional life. It is understandable that I should have sentimental attachment for the little personage who played so big a part in the course of Disney Productions and has been so happily accepted as an amusing friend wherever films are shown around the world. He still speaks for me and I still speak for him.

I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.

Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all - no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself - a game of make-believe, or re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it.

He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

Ooh, he's a moody old man. Song of Summer in his hand. Ooh, he's a moody old man. ...in...in...in his hand. ...in his hand.

I have a lot of things in my classes that I call 'voluntarily mandatory.' One of the things that is voluntarily mandatory is that every student come to see me in my office at least once. I cannot teach bodies. I can only relate to people. And so I say, 'Come in, and we will sit across from one another. I don't want to talk about the texts or the class. We can do that another time. I just want to know the last time you saw a unicorn and do you still believe in primeval forests. And when you come, I am going to touch you - and if that bothers you, take your tranquilizer.' It is amazing how many are intimidated by someone who says, 'I want to touch you.' I was raised in a large Italian family, as most of you know, and everybody hugs everybody all the time. On holidays everyone gets together, and it takes forty-five minutes just to say hello and forty-five minutes to say goodbye. Babies, parents, dogs - everyody's got to be loved! And so I have never suffered that existential feeling of not being. If someone can hug you and not go through you, you are. Try it sometime.

How might one describe Max Beerbohm to someone who knows nothing about him? Well, for a start, one might imagine D.H. Lawrence. Picture the shagginess of Lawrence, his thick beard, his rough-cut clothes, his disdain for all the social and physical niceties. Recall his passionateness-his passion, so to say, for passion itself-his darkness, his gloom. Think back to his appeal to the primary instincts, his personal messianism, his refusal to deal with anything smaller than capital 'D' Destiny. Do not neglect his humorlessness, his distaste for all that otherwise passed for being civilized, his blood theories and manifold roiling hatreds. Have you, then, D.H. Lawrence firmly in mind? Splendid. Now reverse all of Lawrence's qualities and you will have a fair beginning notion of Max Beerbohm, who, after allowing that Lawrence was a man of 'unquestionable genius,' felt it necessary to add, 'he never realized, don't you know-he never suspected that to be stark, staring mad is somewhat of a handicap to a writer.'

Initially, I was scared to pick Suhana in my arms. She was so fragile, unlike Aryan. I could toss up Aryan and play rough with him but Suhana was different, she's a lady. Very quiet and loving, but I have a feeling she'll grow up to be very naughty. - Shahrukh

He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person.

Art Bell is full of crap.

Yes, Art Bell, one of the great cosmic freaks.

I'm a simple man myself.

A nice unparticular man.

Bertrand Russell would not have wished to be called a saint of any description; but he was a great and good man.

For us she is not the iron lady. She is the kind, dear Mrs. Thatcher.

Princess Bibesco delighted in a semi-ideal world - a world which, though having a counterpart in her experience, was to a great extent brought into being by her own temperament and, one might say, flair.

Personality is reduced and deformed with depleted thoughts and stagnant mind.

He was drawn to the centers of learning to announce his startling philosophy; from most he was curtly expelled... He was contradictory, capricious, often insufferable: his moods could flash abruptly from antic lampooning to raw invective, from wild exhilaration to fierce bitterness, from clownishness to a blackdog melancholy. 'Gay in sorrow, sorrowful in gaiety,' he said of himself, and the contraries of the tempestuous Bruno survive in his writings, where exalted and discerning passages seem to bob and dip in great waves of bombast... Controversial and largely dismissed in his lifetime, Bruno fared no better after his death. If his ideas were disputed, so was his martyrdom. For centuries, rumor and doubt shrouded the terrible fire in the Campo dei Fiore and as late as 1885 there are references to the 'legends' of Bruno's burning at the stake... Only in the twentieth century has Bruno begun emerging from his long neglect into prominence.

I say the time is ripe for a William Saroyan revival... Bill Saroyan, that rollicking elf of an author who knew well of irony and compassion and laughter, wrote first-class original works for television, and the adaptations of his plays invariably hit the mark. I am thinking now in particular of the Playhouse 90 production of 'The Time of Your Life.' In it Jackie Gleason delivered a tremendous portrayal as Joe the philosopher who had this wistful greeting for everyone who entered the bar: 'What's the dream?' ... In one of his last essays you may find a perceptive line that tells of the Saroyan working philosophy: 'The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it.' ... He looked, William Saroyan, exactly the way you would expect him to look. He had a huge mustache and a booming voice and a commanding presence. He was exuberant. He was mischievous. He was fun. ... How he could make the English language soar! His words danced. This was writing that was never inhabited by wallflowers. This was Bill Saroyan.

Kurt and I weren't the closest of friends, but I knew him well enough to be devastated by his death. For such a quiet person, he was so excited about having a child.

I'm just a quiet man

A rude and boisterous captain of the sea.

That was the worst of Dr Reilly. You never knew whether he was joking or not. He always said things in the same slow melancholy way - but half the time there was a twinkle underneath it.

It would be difficult Bland thought, to forget Hercule Poirot, and this not entirely for complimentary reasons.

'And that's Jaska, one crazy son-of-a-BIATCH!'

There's something about blonds that triggers a lightheartedness. People can't take you seriously. Brunettes are more mysterious.

'I accepted the face that as much as I want to lead others, and love to be around other people, in some essential way, I am something of a loner.'

I said one day that Dole had a temper, and he got madder than hell. He has one. He has a mean one.

I guess I'm pretty much of a lone wolf. I don't say I don't like people at all but, to tell you the truth I only like it then if I have a chance to look deep into their hearts and their minds.

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

The present man will do well, and will be particularly loyal and anxious to please me in every way. He is vy. peculiar, but vy. clever and sensible and vy. conciliatory.

I would say that there are certain glittering generalities that can be made about every sign that will hold true about everybody who's a member of that sign. For instance, if you had been a Virgo, you would have understood how I hate to be late. I broke up a group I was in once called The Big Three because one of the guys was chronically late and I couldn't take it. I feel when you're supposed to be some place on time, you're there on time. You don't hang people up. It doesn't matter if you're the President of the United States. That's not what you are here for, to hang people up. When I know somebody's sign, and I usually know everybody's sign whether they tell me or not - after getting into this for several years - it helps me to deal with them. Usually I'd rather let people deal with me. That's a total ego hang up, but that's where it's at.

Charm is the true gift of the Fairies.

Even in his palmiest days there were good friends who could stand only limited stretches of the Lambert barrage of ideas, jokes, fantasy, quotations, apt instances, things that had struck him as he walked through London, not because these lacked quality, on the contrary because the mixture was after a while altogether too rich.

And she had It. It, hell; she had Those.

[A] lady ... with all the poise of the Sphinx though but little of her mystery.

I'm a telephone freak, the greatest invention since peanut brittle.

He had that nameless charm, with a strong magnetism which can only be called 'It', and cats - as well as women - always knew when he came into the room.

Cannavaro has that unmistakable presence as a leader and in my impression, is exactly like that tough and cool-headed defense he shows on the pitch.

I do not like broccoli and I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli. Now look, this is the last statement I'm going to have on broccoli. There are truckloads of broccoli at this very minute descending on Washington. My family is divided. For the broccoli vote out there: Barbara loves broccoli. She has tried to make me eat it. She eats it all the time herself. So she can go out and meet the caravan of broccoli that's coming in.

King George VI of the United Kingdom: 'How many men have you killed in war, General Patton?' Patton: 'Seven, sir.'. Eisenhower: 'How many did you say, General Patton?' Patton: 'Three, sir.' Eisenhower: 'Ok, George, we'll let you get away with that.'

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.

He's awesome! He's really, really charming, sexy, and just himself and natural, and he made it very easy for me to work with him.

Heath's sexy, but it's not an I'm-better-than-you kind of sexy. He's so much fun to be around because he doesn't try to play it cool.

I don't suppose a writing man ever really gets rid of his old crocus-yellow neckties. Sooner or later, I think, they show up in his prose, and there isn't a hell of a lot he can do about it.

Oh, it's - it's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have. Some women, the few, have charm for all; and most have charm for one. But some have charm for none.

Now I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive glance.

He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.

No one in our age was cleverer than Keynes nor made less attempt to conceal it.

When you meet someone like Hunter Thompson and watch him, get to know him - people say whatever they want to say about Hunter and his books - he's pure, he's absolutely pure. There's really not an ugly bone in the guy's body. (2004)

have a few quirks like being interested in insects and odd smells and stuff like that. (2004)

I'm shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I've done everything I can to avoid it.

The personality may grievously fail in attaining any real wholeness. One thing is certain, that the well-developed, well-integrated personality is the highest product of evolution, the fullest realization we know of in the universe.

Human potentialities constitute the world's greatest resource, but at the moment only a tiny fraction of them is being realized. The possibility of tapping and directing these vast resources of human possibility provide the religion of the future with a powerful long-term motive. An equally powerful short-term motive is to ensure the fullest possible development and flowering of individual personalities. In developing a full, deep and rich personality the individual ceases to be a mere cog or cipher, and makes his own particular contribution to evolutionary fulfilment.

Barbara Walters: So, Kate, do you even own a skirt? Katharine Hepburn: I own one, Barbara. I shall wear it to your funeral.

He is a terrible planner, though. So am I.

Out of the six of us, I am the quietest.

A colossus beyond the grasp of most mortals, with his totally uncompromising power, his unsensual and uningratiating way with music as with people.

When you get the personality, you don't need the nudity.

Intellectual responses are known as opinions and Mary had them and had them. Still she was so little of an ideologue as to be sometimes unsettling in her refusal of tribal reaction - left or right, male or female, that sort of thing. She was doggedly personal and often this meant being so aslant that there was, in this determined rationalist, an endearing crankiness, very American and homespun somehow.

I absolutely adored Mary. I was transfixed by her. She was so beautiful, so witty, so much fun to talk to.

Our Garrick's a salad; for in him we see Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree!

[on Kelly's drummer friend] Anyone that beats fucking skins for a living has got to be somewhat weird.