"The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first."
— Jim Morrison

"...larger than life...I've never understood that expression. What's larger than life?"
— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

"I've always been very confident in my immaturity."
— Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn: The Final Empire)

"I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard."
— Robertson Davies (The Rebel Angels)

"Contrary to what you may have heard from Henry Rollins or/and Ian MacKaye and/or anyone else who joined a band after working in an ice cream shop, you can't really learn much about a person based on what kind of music they happen to like. As a personality test, it doesn't work even half the time. However, there is at least one thing you can learn: The most wretched people in the word are those who tell you they like every kind of music 'except country.' People who say that are boorish and pretentious at the same time."
— Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)

"I have attempted to find your good side, but after exhaustive efforts, I have determined that you are spherical."
— Linda Dobbins

""Marsh: Our best efforts were never even a mild annoyance to the Lord Ruler."
"Kelsier: Ah, but being an annoyance is something that I am very good at. In fact, I'm far more than just a 'mild' annoyance--people tell me I can be downright frustrating. Might as well use this talent for the cause of good, eh?""
— Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn: The Final Empire)

"
I’ve always been a slow learner in some areas of my life.mostly the areas known as myself. Or maybe I should say ‘selves.’because the fact is, I’ve never, even as a child, felt I’m only one self, only one person. I’ve always felt I’m quite a few more than one. For example, there’s my jokey self, there’s my morose and fed-up self,there’s my lewd and disgusting self. There’s my clever-clogs self, and my fading-violet-who-cant-make-up-her-mind-about-anything self. There’s my untidy-clothes-everywhere-all-over-my-room self, and my manically tidy self when I want my room to be minimalist and Zen to the nth degree. There’s my confidant, arrogant self and my polite and reasonable and good listener self. There’s my self-righteous self and my wickedly bad self, my flaky self and my bsentimental self. There are selfs I like and selfs I don’t like.there’s my little-girl selfnwhonlikes to play silly games and there’s my old-woman self when I’m quite sure I’m eighty and edging towards geriatric.
The self I show in action at any moment depends on where I am, who I’m with, the circumstances of the situation and the mood I’m in."
— Aidan Chambers (This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn)

"I really like you better aimless and lost among people, a little crazy, oddball, not looking like yourself. So that I don't know you at all and the nearer I get to you the more you separate yourself from me-- I get dizzy trying to follow you and I have to work really hard-- and that's what I want!"
— Alia Mamdouh (Loved Ones: A Modern Arabic Novel)

"The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves. "
— Marcel Duchamp

"Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have , so to speak , pawned a part of their narcissism."
— Sigmund Freud

"I snorted "oh, beauty. What's that good for?"
Mary stared, her eyes round.

"It won you the prince, did it not?"

I snorted again, I prefer to think that he was captivated by my charming personality." I giggled to let Mary know I was trying to make fun of myself."
— Marg Peterson Haddix (Just Ella)

"Strength of character means the ability to overcome resentment against others, to hide hurt feelings, and to forgive quickly."
— Lawrence G. Lovasik

"SPIT ALL OVER SOMEONE WITH A MOUTHFUL OF MILK IF YOU WANT TO FIND OUT SOMETHING ABOUT THEIR PERSONALITY FAST."
— Jenny Holzer, SURVIVAL SERIES

"Not always the best things is good for us and not always the bad things is bad for ourself. We are uniqe and no one have the same exactly we are."
— shanah edbel

"Jemanden zu beeinflussen bedeutet, ihm eine fremde Seele zu geben."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

""I don't know how you persist in being so stubborn--"

"It's a superpower. I was bitten by a radioactive mule.""
— Shannon Hale (The Actor and the Housewife: A Novel)

"In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant."
— David F. Wells (No Place for Truth or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?)

"Does it help if we're so strong-willed, stubborn, ambitious, and selfish that we always overcome everything in our way no matter what?" asked Wang-mu.

"I think those are the pertinent virtues, yes," said Peter.

"Then let's do it. That's us in spades."
— Orson Scott Card (Children of the Mind)

"There's only two men I trust. One is me. The other is not you."
— Cameron Poe (Con Air)

"It´s a good thing when a man is different from your image of him. Is shows he isn´t a type. If he were, it would be the end of him as a man. But if you can´t place him in a category, it means that at least a part of him is what a human being ought to be. He has risen above himself, he has a grain of immortality."
— Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago)

"To gain something, you have to lose something."
— Amanullah Ashraf

"The first time I see a jogger smiling, I'll consider it."
— Joan Rivers

"Our journey and the uncompleted in our life make us never give up to take piece by piece what we can. Build those the puzzle from our wishes and dream become strong personality and show way to reach the success." - shanah edbel"
— shanah edbel

"Fritz was melancholic by nature, and could tolerate his own gloom. I do not think this is so with you, who are sanguine and impatient. In your case, remorse and despondency could be crippling."
— John Christopher (The Pool of Fire)

"Ein Individuum, das sich nicht in einen bürgerlichen Zustand zwingen [lässt], [kann] den Segnungen des Begriffs „Person“ nicht teilhaftig werden."
— Heribert Prantl (Der Terrorist als Gesetzgeber. Wie man mit Angst Politik macht)

"Rebelism is a stereotype."
— J.D. Gibson

"Whatever does not pretend at all has style enough."
— Booth Tarkington (The Magnificent Ambersons)

"[I]n Amerika wird das Modell des Ich als ein Geist, der eine Maschine bewohnt, auf volkstümlicher Ebene fast unbestritten hingenommen."
— J.M. Coetzee (Tagebuch eines schlimmen Jahres)

"Frage nach des Mannes Wert und nicht nach seinen Eltern."
— al-Hariri

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
— William Faulkner

"Captain West advanced to meet me, and before our outstretched hands touched, before his face broke from repose to greeting and the lips moved to speech, I got the first astonishing impact of his personality. Long, lean, in his face a touch of race I as yet could only sense, he was as cool as the day was cold, as poised as a king or emperor, as remote as the farthest fixed star, as neutral as a proposition of Euclid. And then, just ere our hands met, a twinkle of--oh--such distant and controlled geniality quickened the many tiny wrinkles in the corner of the eyes; the clear blue of the eyes was suffused by an almost colourful warmth; the face, too, seemed similarly to suffuse; the thin lips, harsh-set the instant before, were as gracious as Bernhardt's when she moulds sound into speech. "
— Jack London (The Mutiny of the Elsinore)

"Aus Furcht vor einem Fehler nichts anzufangen ist das Zeichen eines schlechten Mannes."
— Hitopadesa

"Wen das Wort nicht schlägt, den schlägt auch der Stock nicht."
— Socrates

"Vertraue einem edlen Charakter mehr als einem Eid."
— Solon

"Is she always like this?" "No, usually worse."
— Steve Voake (The Web of Fire)

"I knew of a girl who thought that she was very wealthy because she had a complex. After further investigating it was not something to vacate, although she continued to be a conglomerate."
— Alton Hayes

"It was generally held knowledge among the people who lived on Whitward Street that the eldest of the three Miss Lockwells had a peculiar habit of reading while walking.

So often was she observed engaged in this activity that, whie the practice was unusual--and therefore not altogether admirable--people had become accustomed to it. On almost any fine day she might be seen striding past the brick houses that stood along the street as upright as magistrates, a volume in her hands and her attention absorbed by the pages before her. No one bothered to wave or call out in greeting as she passed; they had learned long ago there was no point in it when she had a book with her.

And Miss Lockwell always had SOME book about her, be it small or large or thin or fat, with gilt-edged pages or a cracked leather cover or leatters writ in gold down the spine. When they saw her coming, people stepped out of her path. Or, if the charitable thought occurred, positioned themselves in front of loose cobbles, lampposts, or other hazarads so she would be forced to go around them, which she did without breaking her stride. Or taking her eyes off her book."
— Galen Beckett

"To use the term 'clerk' as an insult is simply a banal vulgarity; Pessoa and Svevo, however would have welcomed it as a just attribute of the poet. The latter does not resemble Achilles or Diomedes, ranting on their war-chariots, but is more like Ulysses, who knows that he is no one. He manifests himself in this revelation of impersonality that conceals him in the prolixity of things, as travelling erases the traveller in the confused murmur of the street."
— Claudio Magris (Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea)

"In general trying to separate nature and nurture makes about as much sense as trying to separate personality and situation. The two influences are completely interrelated."
— Walter Mischel

"So I've come to the conclusion that it is thus my own fault when these people I have been talking about finally stop saying "Ah" and tell me it's a pity I always do such odd things."
— Barbara Wright

"Ihr seid gut, wenn ihr eins mit euch seid."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"There were some people, it seemed, who were incapable of being pleasant about anything. Of course, the cars that such people drove tended to be difficult as well. Nice cars have nice drivers; bad cars have bad drivers. A person's gearbox revealed everything that you could want to know about that person, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni."
— Alexander McCall Smith (The Good Husband of Zebra Drive)

"In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyse and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest."
— Fernando Pessoa