Now the answer … is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMAll the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
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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 -
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
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 -
As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
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You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
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 -
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.
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Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.
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 -
Love is what happens to men and women who don’t know each other.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
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We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
There are two good things in life – freedom of thought and freedom of action.
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Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.
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I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?
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They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.
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What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
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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.
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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