The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMI can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I 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 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 -
I’d sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
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 -
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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 -
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM