W. Somerset Maugham famous quotes
Last updated: Jul 22, 2024
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We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan't make the mistakes I've made. When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never had a chance. I'm going to bring up my daughter so that she's free and can stand on her own feet. I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he's willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
She [Sadie Thompson] gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer. "You men! You filthy dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!"
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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 -
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A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.'
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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To write simply is as difficult as to be good.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
When you're eighteen your emotions are violent, but they're not durable.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.†Waddington, smiling, translated the question. “She says I’m good.†“As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue,†Kitty mocked.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
I don't understand anything. Life is so strange. I feel like some one who's lived all his life by a duck-pond and suddenly is shown the sea. It makes me a little breathless, and yet it fills me with elation. I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm beginning to feel a new courage. I feel like one of those old sailors who set sail for undiscovered seas and I think my soul hankers for the unknown.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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Life isn't long enough for love and art.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
-- W. Somerset Maugham -
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