You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMWhen I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan’t make the mistakes I’ve made.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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 MAUGHAM -
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 MAUGHAM -
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
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 -
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 -
The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM