You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMThere is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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.
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 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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It’s no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
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 -
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.
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 -
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 -
Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM