if you’d ever had a grown-up daughter you’d know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her – well, it’s much better to pretend you’re the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMA dictator must fool all the people all the time and there’s only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he’s willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Love is what happens to men and women who don’t know each other.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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 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 -
Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Death doesn’t affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn’t concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Life isn’t long enough for love and art.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.
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