It wasn’t until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, ‘I don’t know.’
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMI’ll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell… their heart’s in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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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 essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Throw yourself into the hurly-burly of life. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make, what unhappiness you have to undergo. It is all your material …
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If a man hasn’t what’s necessary to make a woman love him, it’s his fault, not hers.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
A 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 MAUGHAM -
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one’s soul.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one’s life with her.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM