It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMYou waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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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 -
If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
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 -
The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither.
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 -
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
She loved three things – a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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 MAUGHAM -
There are two good things in life – freedom of thought and freedom of action.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Don’t wait for experience to come to you; go out after experience. Experience is your material.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM