Life isn’t long enough for love and art.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMThere is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s means of livelihood.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
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The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
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If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.
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We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
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There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.
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You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers.
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Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
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In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
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Don’t wait for experience to come to you; go out after experience. Experience is your material.
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The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
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Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
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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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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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When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.
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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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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.
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You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity.
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The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?
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Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.
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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?
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When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never had a chance. I’m going to bring up my daughter so that she’s free and can stand on her own feet.
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The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
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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 -
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