I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you’re ground down by convention. You can’t think as you like and you can’t act as you like. That’s because it’s a democratic nation. I expect America’s worse.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMWe know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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People 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 MAUGHAM -
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The 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 MAUGHAM -
It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I’d sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.
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 -
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
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 -
Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither.
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