Marshall McLuhan Quotes

Where are the vehicles to character development in secular society?

Modern culture is a tremendous force.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Praise makes good men better and bad men worse.

I think all my life's story is condensed in my face. It is neither innocent nor coy. It speaks volumes.

Age, habits of business and experience have modified many characters.

Men become old, but they never become good.

Legitimately produced, and truly inspired, fiction interprets humanity, informs the understanding, and quickens the affections. It reflects ourselves, warns us against prevailing social follies, adds rich specimens to our cabinets of character, dramatizes life for the unimaginative, daguerreotypes it for the unobservant, multiplies experience for the isolated or inactive, and cheers age, retirement and invalidism with an available and harmless solace.

The most human thing about anyone is a thing he learns and ... and earns. It's a thing he can't have when he's very young; if he gets it at all, he gets it after a long search and a deep conviction. After that it's truly part of him as long as he lives.

Some literature is knowledge, some is just data. But if I can get a "happy" ending - which is when for the characters I'm writing about, something happens that they move from wherever they are in the beginning to knowledge or wisdom, they know something they never would have acknowledged or realized if it hadn't been for my book - that for me is what literature does.

Our life evokes our character and you find out more about yourself as you go on.

Life, whether in this world or any other, is the sum of our attainment, our experience, our character. The conditions are secondary. In what other world shall we be more surely than we are here?

The sisters and brothers that you meet give you the materials which your character uses to build itself. It is said that some people are born great, others achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. In truth, the ways in which your character is built have to do with all three of those. Those around you, those you choose, and those who choose you.

A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life.

A man has more character in his face at forty than at twenty - he has suffered longer.

No man is born wise; but wisdom and virtue require a tutor; though we can easily learn to be vicious without a master.

I just think of interesting roles to play. I guess that I have matured, I guess growing up and becoming a man, your taste in characters changes and I think I have become more interested in active characters as I have become less contemplative in my personal life. Things have become a little bit more interesting in the doing these days and less interesting in the thinking about the doing.

I think that there is no doubt that every experience you have in your life, whether it's playing a character or something else, you bring that to the work.

It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.

Nothing perhaps affects man's character more than the company he keeps

Hopefully, every character that I take on, as I grow older, becomes more interesting. Obviously, as I grow older, I have more to bring to the table and more experiences that I've lived myself, so I'm hoping that I can color my characters, more and more.

I'm an actor, so I'm interested in the pursuit of storytelling and character and challenging myself and expanding my craft. That's not something that ever ends, because as you grow as a person, so does your capacity to play different characters. New things come up, new things you want to explore and new stories you want tell about life and your knowledge of things. I don't think there's ever going to be that satisfaction of "and now, comfort."

I do think it's important to be smiling and not make it all about business. You'll look back and regret it later, if you don't take advantage of your youth and your ability to travel. And it gives you something to pull from and inspiration to play your characters, and for your life and your development as a human being.

Becoming a father made me much more interested in the parent character in my novels. I've never found parents that interesting.