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 MAUGHAMTo bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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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 -
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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 …
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
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?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.
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 -
A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM