It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does…

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

W. Somerset Maugham

1919

★ 1.8

Other tags relating to this quote

Topic

Suffering Learning from suffering Pointless suffering

Medium

Novel

Time

1919

Person

W. Somerset Maugham

Provenance

Current citation

Maugham, William Somerset. The Moon and Sixpence. Vintage Classics, 2009, ch. 17.

Original citation

Maugham, William Somerset. The Moon and Sixpence. William Heinemann, 1919, ch. 17.

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Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.

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There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.

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Ernest Hemingway

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We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

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It is a funny thing about life, if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it: if you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other you are very likely to get what you want.

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1940

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Other media

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Other media onSubject·Suffering

Book · 400 BC

The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes

Artwork · 1937

Guernica

Pablo Picasso

Film · 1966

Au Hasard Balthazar

Robert Bresson

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but… — W. Somerset Maugham

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