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 MAUGHAMThey 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 MAUGHAMYou demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMTo 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 MAUGHAMI recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMMost people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMA bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMOh, 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 MAUGHAMThe love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMIn France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They’re both very good things.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMWhy 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 MAUGHAMWhat 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 MAUGHAMIt 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 MAUGHAMPeople talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMThe prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMWhen you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMYou know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM