There are two good things in life – freedom of thought and freedom of action.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMThere is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
She loved three things – a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s means of livelihood.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
if 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 MAUGHAM -
Throw yourself into the hurly-burly of life. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make, what unhappiness you have to undergo. It is all your material …
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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 -
I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he’s willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.
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 -
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?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM