if you’d ever had a grown-up daughter you’d know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her – well, it’s much better to pretend you’re the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMIn Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
-
-
When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.
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 -
There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s means of livelihood.
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 -
It wasn’t until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, ‘I don’t know.’
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
They have no manners and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public house and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious . They are scum.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Oh, it’s always the same,’ she sighed, ‘if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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 -
Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Love is what happens to men and women who don’t know each other.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Don’t wait for experience to come to you; go out after experience. Experience is your material.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM