We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMPeople ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?
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 -
It’s no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
He is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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 -
It’s no good trying to keep up old friendships. It’s painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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 MAUGHAM -
The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM