W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

I learned not to get too happy about good news or too distraught about bad.

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

I'm not a very emotional guy. I just move on to the next play. I've always been that way. I don't like showing much. I just try to do my job and get out. It's important to stay poised until that clock says zero.

I am not a character who gets carried away with good or bad performances and I won't get carried away by bigger or lesser critics. It's the same when you get praise. You can't get carried away with that.

I don't want sadness or happiness to affect my life.

I don't cry America. I do not cry. That was a once in a lifetime event. I do not cry, do you understand? I don't cry, okay?

No, nothing really upsets me.

We believe it is bad or dangerous to be carried away by our emotions. We admire the person who is cool, who acts without feeling.

As a young child, I was never a crier. I never cried to get my way, or even when I was in pain.

You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one.

Strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them

In the first two episodes, before she becomes Queen, I could be a lot freer with my emotions, but as the series goes on, she develops an armour in order to cope with her circumstances. She has to be a sphinx, which must be so hard. Imagine never being able to shout, 'Shut up,' or cry, even in front of your own family.

Having no emotions is the most difficult, to tone it down.

I'm fairly unemotional and tend not to get too excited when things go well and I tend not to get too depressed when they go badly.

Don't get carried away when things go well, don't get carried away when they go badly.

I don't think you can let comments affect you too much as then you are not doing your job properly.

If I play well I'm not very, very happy and if I play badly I'm not very, very sad. I just try to keep my balance.

Of course, fighting is one of the most emotional things that you can possibly do. You have to constantly deal with your emotions, especially myself. I have so many that that's where I get my energy from. But it's a matter of controlling them, and yeah, I just don't let nothing affect me.

Even as a boy, my dad always told me, 'Don't show emotion.' If I banged my cue, he would give me a row and say, 'Stop that.' Don't show any petulance. It was developed, certainly, but I think you have got to have it in you.

How can you not care?" "Practice," Magnus said, looking back to his book and turning the page.

If you can wait, and not be tired by waiting ... if you can dream, and not make dreams your master; if you can think, and not make thoughts your aim; if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same; ... yours is the earth and everything that's in it...

Can't react every time you're insulted. Free people absorb destructive things and refuse to be destroyed

What's the good of being stoical if nobody notices?

Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, "Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?" neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility. . . .

Also, I feel that crying is almost--like, aside from deaths of relatives or whatever-- totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1.Don't care too much. 2. Shut up. Everything unfortunate that has ever happened to me has stemmed from failure to follow one of the rules.