W. Somerset Maugham quote: "[Emerson] had a gift of the picturesque phrase, but too often it is empty of meaning. He is a nimble skater who cuts elegant and complicated figures on a surface of frozen platitudes. Perhaps he would have been a better writer if he had not been quite so good a man."

The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Writing is the supreme solace.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, on...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of ligh...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the ba...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, ch...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Tolerance is another word for indifference.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead beca...
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

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

We know our friends by their defects rather than their merits.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I learnt that men were moved by a savage egoism, that love was only the dirty trick nature played on...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Love is what happens to a man and woman who don't know each other.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantag...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

There are two good things in life -- freedom of thought and freedom of action.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without d...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It was a cold morning, and he shivered a little; but he had been taught by his uncle that his prayer...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me n...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

In the first place it's not true that people improve as you know them better: they don't. That's why...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she ha...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries o...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is fooli...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradic...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The great critic...must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Perfection has one grave defect. It is apt to be dull.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, i...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humor.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The Americans who are the most efficient people on earth...have invented so wide a range of pithy an...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate m...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clich?s that...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to acc...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made o...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Lady Hodmarsh and the duchess immediately assumed the clinging affability that persons of rank assum...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest p...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammere...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an aut...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are...
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

The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the b...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the uni...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasin...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and bef...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

You can do anything in this world if you are prepares to take the consequences.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Money is like a sixth sense, and you can't make use of the other five without it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Wives are people who feel they don't dance enough.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The well-dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

For the memory of love is sweet, though the love itself were in vain. And what I have lost of pleasu...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The end of culture is right living.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I knew that suffering did not enoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It abs...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifice...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Bo...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

When you're eighteen your emotions are violent, but they're not durable.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going dow...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Tao. Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. I...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The crown of literature is poetry.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering f...
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

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pl...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mo...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know the...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain su...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with i...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that havi...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

There are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young ju...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It's a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, but few are chosen.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is very difficult to know people and I don't think one can ever really know any but one's own cou...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persis...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies a...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dep...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the comm...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

To write simply is as difficult as to be good.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is funny about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the very best you will very often get i...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. H...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Love is a dirty trick played on us to achieve the continuation of the species.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

We have long passed the Victorian era, when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a ba...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacri...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches them tolerance.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large wi...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actuall...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by make-believe.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the wo...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and wo...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is er...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty o...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is er...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who has lost it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man w...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Life isn't long enough for love and art.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

When things are at their worst I find something always happens.
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, pe...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to th...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefo...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesth...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know the...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for noth...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

[Emerson] had a gift of the picturesque phrase, but too often it is empty of meaning. He is a nimble skater who cuts elegant and complicated figures on a surface of frozen platitudes. Perhaps he would have been a better writer if he had not been quite so good a man.

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W. Somerset Maugham

[Emerson] had a gift of the picturesque phrase, but too often it is empty of meaning. He is a nimble skater who cuts elegant and complicated figures on a surface of frozen platitudes. Perhaps he would have been a better writer if he had not been quite so good a man.

W. Somerset Maugham

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