If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMAny society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
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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.
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It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.
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He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.
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Impropriety is the soul of wit.
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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.
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There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity.
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Throw yourself into the hurly-burly of life. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make, what unhappiness you have to undergo. It is all your material …
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It’s no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
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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.
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When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
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As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.
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Oh, it is dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of your sight, and realize that you would not mind if you never saw her again. The tragedy of love is indifference.
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It wasn’t until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, ‘I don’t know.’
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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.
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I’ll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell… their heart’s in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
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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.
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I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of.
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The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.
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Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain.
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The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
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We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.
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You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?
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Now the answer … is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.
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In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM