« All Character Quotes · W. Somerset Maugham's Page
Character Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
- The normal is what you find but rarely. The normal is an ideal. It is a picture that one fabricates of the average characteristics of…
- Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.
- The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim…
- Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.
- No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters,…
- Culture is not just an ornament; it is the expression of a nation's character, and at the same time it is a powerful instrument to…
- You can never know enough about your characters
- He is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end…
- No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point; but then his imagination goes…
- Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual…
- To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give... You will find that people forget the failures of others…
- It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.
- When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
- It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
- But there are people who take salt with their coffee. They say it gives a tang, a savour, which is peculiar and fascinating. In the…
- There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons…
- It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.
- To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.
- If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.
- When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character. --W. Somerset Maugham
More Character Quotes
- The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. — Hannah Arendt
- Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion. — Aristotle
- Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them. — Aristotle
- The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons. — Aristotle
- All virtue is summed up in dealing justly. — Aristotle
- What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue… — Aristotle
- One of my favorite things about 'Star Trek' wasn't just the overt banter but the humor in that show about the relationships… — J. J. Abrams
- My mom was such a strong character. I don't want to say she was like a man, but she was tough. — Lance Armstrong
- Casting ethnic characters is a very hard thing to do, but it's important. It's also interesting. — Darren Aronofsky
- You can fake your age or mask it, but the passion that moves the characters has to be real. — Victoria Abril
- I have always regarded Mr. Bean as a timeless, ageless character, and I would rather he be remembered as a character mostly… — Rowan Atkinson
- When I was doing Bean more than I've done him in the last few years, I did strange things - like appearing… — Rowan Atkinson