When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMFor 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.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there’s only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
To 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 MAUGHAM -
In 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 MAUGHAM -
Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Men seek but one thing in life — their pleasure.
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 -
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Love is what happens to men and women who don’t know each other.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
There are two good things in life – freedom of thought and freedom of action.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM






