He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMIt’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
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 -
Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly?
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 -
There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there’s only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
They have no manners and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public house and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious . They are scum.
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 -
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
She loved three things – a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.
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