How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMWe must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
-
-
There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
When 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.
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 -
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 -
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 -
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.
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 -
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.
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 -
She loved three things – a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It’s no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
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 -
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 -
There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
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 -
The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM