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 MAUGHAMMen seek but one thing in life — their pleasure.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he’s willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You’re intoxicated by the boundless space.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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 -
As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one’s life with her.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM