FastSaying

The great critic...must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.


W. Somerset Maugham

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

I don't feel when I'm writing that I'm drawing from any other writer, but of course I mu...
CHARLES MCCARRY The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES if a philosopher wishes to be useful to human society, he must announce a God.
VOLTAIRE To become acquainted with kindness one must be prepared to learn new things and feel new feelings. K...
ROBERT J. FUREY (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literat...
BERTRAND RUSSELL To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the
personality of the artist; and if that is ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
BLAISE PASCAL This very worrying trial has major implications for human rights, media freedom and democratization ...
KOLAWOLE OLANIYAN One of the first and most important things for a critic to learn is how to sleep undetected in the t...
WILLIAM ARCHER The poet strips naked. The philosopher takes notes.
MARTY RUBIN Questions are the food of a philosopher.
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) The philosopher is greater than the Pastor or the Imam,because the philosopher is the only person th...
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) Long after an event has occurred & even forgotten,the Philosopher will continue in meditation upon t...
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) When hopeful and hopeless come together, both will learn great things from each other: Hopeful will ...
MEHMET MURAT ILDAN To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
BLAISE PASCAL As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity.
KARL JASPERS God give me the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed;Give me courage to change things w...
REINHOLD NIEBUHR To have the time to reminisce is one of the futures gifts. Don't think to much, don't live to fast, ...
CALVIN WILSON We are the masters of our own destinies we shape and mould our lives into to the circumstances surro...
GARY F EVANS... Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
DAVID HUME Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man
DAVID HUME Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.
DAVID HUME By the aid of philosophy you will live not unpleasantly, for you will learn to extract pleasure from...
PLUTARCH The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
WILLIAM JAMES I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particula...
LUDWIG FEUERBACH Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
PLATO This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL My philosophy is to not be scared of anyone. If I play well, great; if I don't, I learn from the...
SAINA NEHWAL At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Mau...
WILBUR SMITH Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember...I think we must expe...
J.K. ROWLING James Agate, a great critic of the day, advised me that the way to learn your job properly was to le...
DONALD SINDEN Into every life may come tragedy and triumph. Our goal is to meet both equally with serenity and rad...
ALEKSANDRA LAYLAND Second letter from Mom:
So! What if you colored the world? This still does not seem a great thi...
ELENA D. CALIN Live in the moment. Don’t carry baggage from the past. Put that baggage in a history book and lear...
DEBASISH MRIDHA To be sure, this requires effort and love, a careful cultivation of the spiritual life, and a watchf...
MEISTER ECKHART He's for you and wants to help you be the person He created you to be.
CRAIG GROESCHEL If you don't challenge yourself to the max you will never be great. I think they will learn a lot fr...
ANTOINE SMITH This is the next chapter in the saga of Somerset, ... We had signed a contract with Somerset for eco...
TOBY MILLER The whole humanity together must start working on focusing on reinforcing the elements of love and c...
ABHIJIT NASKAR A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology a...
GERTRUDE STEIN What will make you a star is in you
SOTONYE ANGA If you define your life by what you learn only, you will never leave a great footprints on earth. Yo...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology a...
GERTRUDE STEIN Wonder [said Socrates] is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning...
PLATO Eros (or call it lust if you will), is like a beautiful, magnificent Afghan Hound! A pure white Afgh...
C. JOYBELL C. Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by tu...
MEISTER ECKHART Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poe...
THOMAS AQUINAS Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poe...
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS The church must be the critic and guide of the state, and never its tool.
LYNN LAVNER If you want to be great, you must learn the secret of great men.
SUNDAY ADELAJA 'Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.
DAG HAMMARSKJOLD "Freedom from fear" could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights
DAG HAMMARSKJOLD To be right, a person must do one of two things: either he must learn to have God in his work and ho...
MEISTER ECKHART To say that God is sovereign is to declare that He is the Almighty, the Possessor of all power in He...
ARTHUR W. PINK You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES Human beings have always yearned for serenity and inner peace.
CHRISTOPHER DINES A philosopher once said, 'Half of good philosophy is good grammar.'
A. P. MARTINICH Somerset desperately needs more high-end music making on its doorstep, so the chance to share great ...
CHARLES HAZLEWOOD In the dark beside me, she smelled of sweat and sunshine and vanilla,
JOHN GREEN With her conservative judicial philosophy, she understands that judges must not legislate from the b...
JAY SEKULOW Before I got here, I thought that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it didn't exist, ...
JOHN GREEN You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
JANE AUSTEN JFK apparently felt genuine sympathy for his 1960 presidential opponent Richard Nixon. He felt that,...
DAVID PIETRUSZA If you think you are the philosopher then I am the philosophy.
AMIT ABRAHAM Western philosophy must be discussed; eastern philosophy must be experienced.
ADRIANO BULLA Life can be tough & make you wanna give up. But baby keep your head up because you got all the time ...
LILLIAN S. VILORIA 'Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.
DAG HAMMARSKJOLD All philosophic propositions, every attempt to think including all acts of oral or written articulat...
KILROY J. OLDSTER A garden must combine the poetic and the mysterious with a feeling of serenity and joy.
LUIS BARRAGAN [W]e now know that the human animal is characterized by two great fears that other animals are prote...
ERNEST BECKER A novelist's characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. ...
ANTHONY TROLLOPE He who esteems trifles for themselves is a trifler; he who esteems them for the conclusions to be dr...
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON Walk and learn from the people that inspire you to do great things
SUNDAY ADELAJA According to Nietzche," said a sharp new voice, making them all jump, "philosophy is the biography o...
J.K. ROWLING As far back as history records people thinking, thinking people have been befuddled by the mysteries...
LEWIS N. ROE Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to ...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON A great leader must learn to plant trees whose fruits his generation will not be a beneficiary in it...
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) I'm fucking the grave, I thought, I'm bringing the dead back to life...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil ca...
OSCAR WILDE From the Kindle Book Reflections in the Mirror of Life:
“In a slum somewhere in India
As...
THE PROPHET OF LIFE Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the super...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU Trust is learning how you feel about yourself,
not how others feel about you.
Do you trust...
RON W. RATHBUN “There came philosophy then religion then logic. There will come logic then religion then philosop...
EPHDAN We've seen growing respect for NGOs' impartiality, which is a function of a long-term trend of peopl...
PETER HARDSTAFF must disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which his or her impartiality might reasonably...
MARTIN COHEN Reading, for pleasure and knowledge, has always been, will always be one of my favorite things to do...
LARRY BROWN A strong personal philosophy does more than sustain us through the tragedies of life. It also stains...
CHRIS PRENTISS The answers are never "out there." All the answers are "in there," inside you, waiting to be discove...
CHRIS PRENTISS Wealth and dominion fade into the mass
Of the great sea of human right and wrong,
When onc...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY He was expressing the wishes of the U.S. elite, ... If anything happens to me, then the man responsi...
HUGO CH Our heavenly Father is great in mercy,
He feeds and clothes us everyday,
We will worship ...
BROTHER YUN A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, and must empty ourselves. Give yourself fully to God. H...
MOTHER TERESA For now, he and Meg were going to have the adventure of seeing a new place and having a new experien...
ANNE BISHOP He must be heard - and also seen; for if he played behind the scenes a great deal of the poetry of h...
ROBERT A. SCHUMANN The attributes of a great lady may still be found in the rule of the four S's: Sincerity, Simplicity...
EMILY POST If Stephen King was a killer, he will be the best killer ever existed, check out his novels, check o...
DEYTH BANGER Thanks to the high standing which science has for so long attain and to the impartiality of the Nobe...
GUGLIELMO MARCONI Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usuall...
H. L. MENCKEN

More W. Somerset Maugham

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 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 We didn't think much in the air corps of a fellow who wangled a cushy job out of his C.O. by butteri...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM