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 MAUGHAMThere is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s means of livelihood.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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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 -
Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.
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.
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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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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 -
I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.
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 -
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 -
If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.
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Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.
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People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM






