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 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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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 -
In 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 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 -
It’s no good trying to keep up old friendships. It’s painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
He is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
When a woman loves you she’s not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she’s weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
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 -
There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If a man hasn’t what’s necessary to make a woman love him, it’s his fault, not hers.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You’re intoxicated by the boundless space.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
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 -
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