Top 38 Defining Characteristic Quotes
#1. Oft times, anger was all I had, my sole defining characteristic. It clung to me like an insecure girlfriend, and I put as little effort into sloughing it off.
Bobby Adair
#2. Perhaps most strikingly of all, it was clear in 1988 that those inside the process had congealed into a permanent political class, the defining characteristic of which was its readiness to abandon those not inside the process.
Joan Didion
#3. What if I've died a long time ago and come here? he wondered. What if the defining characteristic of hell is that you're locked in an endless, blind battle to reform it?
Karan Mahajan
#4. When you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that your defining characteristic-what defines a human being-is to work with others.
Marcus Aurelius
#5. I want to live the next chapter in my life without my lips as my defining characteristic.
Lisa Rinna
#6. Creativity is the foundation of wealth. All progress comes from the creative minority. Under capitalism, wealth is less a stock of goods than a flow of ideas, the defining characteristic of which is surprise. If it were not surprising, we could plan it, and socialism would work.
George Gilder
#7. The defining characteristic of a hipster - the thing everyone agreed on, and most hated about them - wasn't so much their taste, but their contempt and condescension toward those less cool than themselves.
Mara Wilson
#8. The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.
Robert J. Shiller
#9. Perhaps the most defining characteristic of a superhero is a willingness to sacrifice for the good of others, even to the point of laying down his or her own life.
Rachel Hawkins
#11. Years ago, it had occurred to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteristic of the organism is striving. Describing
Paul Kalanithi
#12. Managers who aspire to be ethical must challenge the assumption that they're always unbiased and acknowledge that vigilance, even more than good intention, is a defining characteristic of an ethical manager.
Harvard Business School Press
#13. The ability of humans to read meaning into patterns is the most defining characteristic we have.
Eleanor Catton
#14. You've no idea how wonderful toilet paper is until it's taken away from you by an unfeeling universe. I think it's the defining characteristic of human civilization, the ability to manufacture something decent to wipe your ass on.
Peter F. Hamilton
#15. Parochialism remains the Danes' defining characteristic, but their radically recalibrated sense of identity and national pride has created a curious duality best described as a kind of "humble pride," though many often mistake it for smugness.
Michael Booth
#16. For a bird, especially for the more musically inventive, song is the defining characteristic, the primary way by which it knows itself and is known by others. To lose its species song is to lose not just its identity but some part of its presence in the world.
John Burnside
#17. Seeing race is always about discriminating, a discerning, trained eye recognizing the "essential" or defining characteristic in the individual that confers racial categorization.
Barbara Katz Rothman
#18. [Ella Baker]'s second defining characteristic was her dislike of top-down leadership ... 'She felt leaders were not appointed but the rose up. Someone will rise. Someone will emerge'. It was an attitude Baker shared with some of the older women in the movement.
Gail Collins
#19. If there is a defining characteristic of a man as opposed to a boy, maybe it's patience.
Lance Armstrong
#20. I'm definitely responsible for the image that I put out there. But it does become frustrating, because I don't want 'sexy' to be my defining characteristic. I'd love for my ambition and will and intellect and sense of humour to define me as well.
Eva Mendes
#21. The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human.
Abraham Maslow
#22. And Kelsea wondered suddenly whether humanity ever actually changed. Did people grow and learn at all as the centuries past? Or was humanity merely like the tide, enlightenment advancing and then retreating as circumstances shifted? The most defining characteristic of the species might be lapse.
Erika Johansen
#23. The mythical America?that marvellous, heroic, sentimental landwas an object of faith. It challenged you to make the believer's leap over the rude facts at your feet.
Jonathan Raban
#24. I'm a citizen of the world. I like it that way. The world's a wonderful. I just think that some people are pretty badly represented. But when you speak to the people themselves they're delightful. They all want so little.
Billy Connolly
#25. I would do what I did best, I thought. I would wait. It was only a matter of time, after all.
Alice Sebold
#26. The common law of this state held man and wife to be one person, but that person was the husband.
Harriet Hanson Robinson
#27. reason tends to be the servant rather than the master of desire.
William B. Irvine
#28. Find the goddess inside yourself instead of looking for the god in someone else.
Francesca Lia Block
#29. The basic Irrational Act which is renewed every moment of life, is not to commit suicide.
Nanamoli Thera
#30. Obesity is the result of a loss of self-control. Indeed, loss of self-control might be said to be the defining social (or anti-social) characteristic of our age: public drunkenness, excessive gambling, promiscuity and common-or-garden rudeness are all examples of our collective loss of self-control.
Theodore Dalrymple
#31. Someone Hot is sometimes can't be the person they appear to be- except for their hotness ... that cannot be denied.
Meg Cabot
#32. I've been dancing since I was 6 years old. That kind of relentless dedication and intensity is where I'm comfortable.
Andrea Parker
#33. I have not art to reckon my groans, but that I love thee best, oh, most best, believe it.
William Shakespeare
#34. Disability is a characteristic like hair color; it's not a defining principle.
Jean Driscoll
#36. Scout, if there's ever anything that happens to you or something - you know - something you might not want to tell Atticus about - "
"Huh?"
"You know, if you get in trouble at school or anything
you just let me know. I'll take care of you.
Harper Lee
#37. Set a strong guard about thy outward senses: these are Satan's landing places, especially the eye and the ear.
William Gurnall
#38. I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.
G. M Gilbert
