A Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few.

W. Somerset Maugham

Quote Topics

Act Actor Any By The Time Few How Knows Often Old Part Sort Time Too

Quote Author

W. Somerset Maugham
British - Novelist
January 25, 1874 - December 16, 1965

A person who actually knows how to wear clothes...they would look good in any clothes. You see this especially at the Academy Awards. Even if the dresses are beautiful and expensive and important, the actresses can't always carry them. Sometimes I feel like saying to them, "Act! You know how to act, you're an actor. You're about to win an award for, I don't know, convincingly playing that Venezuelan nun who went to war. Now act like you can wear this dress.".

Fran Lebowitz

As any mom knows, having a baby is an extremely creative act and to love and create a baby, it's on par with any other creative act that we could come up with.

Ani DiFranco

Remember that you are an actor in a play, and that the Playwright chooses the manner of it: If he wants you to act a poor man you must act the part with all your powers; and so if your part be a cripple or a magistrate or a plain man. For your business is to act the character that is given you and act it well. The choice of the cast is Another's.

Epictetus

How do we remember to remember? That's a question I've asked myself often since my time on Duma Key, often in the small hours of the morning, looking up into the absence of light, remembering absent friends. Sometimes in those little hours I think about the horizon. You have to establish the horizon. You have to mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that re-makes the world is heroic. Or so I've come to believe.

Stephen King

"How can you see Christ in people?" And we only say: It is an act of faith, constantly repeated. It is an act of love, resulting from an act of faith. It is an act of hope, that we can awaken these same acts in their hearts, too, with the help of God.

Dorothy Day

The fetish of the great university, of expensive colleges for young women, is too often simply a fetish. It is not based on a genuine desire for learning. Education today need not be sought at any great distance. It is largely compounded of two things, of a certain snobbishness on the part of parents, and of escape from home on the part of youth. And to those who must earn quickly it is often sheer waste of time. Very few colleges prepare their students for any special work.

Mary Roberts Rinehart

All writing, all art, is an act of faith. If one tries to contribute to human understanding, how can that be called decadent? It's like saying a declaration of love is an act of decadence. Any work of art, provide it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.

Truman Capote

In the life of any actor or actress, there is inevitably a time when they will be eligible to act in a Tom Stoppard play. He has written a lot, and they are revived often, and there are so many characters of different ages that it was more likely I'd end up in something of his than that I wouldn't.

Ed Stoppard

You don't go to Berkeley to become an actor. In fact, I don't think you go to any school to become an actor. You've just sort of got to go out there and act.

Kurt Fuller

In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term grown, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our high nature instead of our lower. Any of these will elicit Resistance.

Steven Pressfield

Making choices that improve things for all of us on the planet is an act of compassion, a simple act we can do any time we go shopping.

Daniel Goleman

In any walk of life, a positive, upbeat outlook trumps any adversarial act. Revenge is counterproductive. Unproductive emotions limit one's ability to move forward, to focus, to think positively, to act creatively.

Jon Huntsman, Jr.

Making dances is an act of progress; it is an act of growth, an act of music, an act of teaching, an act of celebration, an act of joy.

Alvin Ailey

When any of us meet someone who rejects dominant norms and values, we feel a little less crazy for doing the same. Any act of rebellion or non-participation, even on a very small scale, is therefore a political act.

Charles Eisenstein

What eleven- to thirteen-year-old boys fear is passivity of any kind. When they do act passively we can be fairly certain that it is an act of aggression designed to torment a parent or teacher. . . . Mischief at best, violence at worst is the boy's proclamation of masculinity.