Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMSimplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMIn France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They’re both very good things.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMAs lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMI am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMThe important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMLife 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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMI’ll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell… their heart’s in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMIt is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMWords have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMI can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMThe future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMYou can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMif 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 MAUGHAMNothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMI 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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMThere is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s means of livelihood.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM