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 MAUGHAMIt was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Don’t wait for experience to come to you; go out after experience. Experience is your material.
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, changing, continue to love a changed person.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don’t.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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 MAUGHAM -
If a man hasn’t what’s necessary to make a woman love him, it’s his fault, not hers.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
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 the last refuge of the mentally destitute.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
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 -
If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Love is what happens to men and women who don’t know each other.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It’s illimitable. It’s such a happy life. There’s only one thing like it, when you’re up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
When a woman loves you she’s not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she’s weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM