There are two good things in life – freedom of thought and freedom of action.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMNow 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.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.
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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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
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 -
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
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When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably.
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The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s means of livelihood.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
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 to do for me.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
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 grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it.
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
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 -
You’re intoxicated by the boundless space.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.
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