We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMThey call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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She loved three things – a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.
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When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
There are two good things in life – freedom of thought and freedom of action.
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.
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The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
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Oh, 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 MAUGHAM -
I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you’re ground down by convention. You can’t think as you like and you can’t act as you like. That’s because it’s a democratic nation. I expect America’s worse.
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The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
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Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
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Words 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 MAUGHAM -
I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of.
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I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
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Life isn’t long enough for love and art.
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Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
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I’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.
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Men seek but one thing in life — their pleasure.
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A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.
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Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
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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?
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To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM