The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMMen seek but one thing in life — their pleasure.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
-
-
Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.
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 -
I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.
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 -
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM