There are two good things in life – freedom of thought and freedom of action.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMThere are two good things in life – freedom of thought and freedom of action.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMArt is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
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 MAUGHAMIf a man hasn’t what’s necessary to make a woman love him, it’s his fault, not hers.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMIt was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMWe do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
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 MAUGHAMThey call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMWhy 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 MAUGHAMOh, 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 MAUGHAMThe important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMAn unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMIf it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMDeath 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 MAUGHAMSimplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMHe had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM