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 MAUGHAMWhat does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.
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 -
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.
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We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.
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Impropriety is the soul of wit.
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One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one’s soul.
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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.
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To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
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The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
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Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.
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You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action.
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Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
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When a woman loves you she’s not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she’s weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.
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I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It’s illimitable. It’s such a happy life. There’s only one thing like it, when you’re up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you.
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The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care?
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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