Quotes by
Somerset Maugham |
1874-1965 , British writer
English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer whose work is characterized by a clear unadorned style, cosmopolitan settings, and a shrewd understanding of human nature.He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s.
| 35 quotes | 2,499 visits |
Quotations
| • | Tolerance is another word for indifference. 10 |
| • | Only a mediocre person is always at his best. 9 |
| • | Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. 8 |
| • | 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. 7 |
| • | People ask for criticism, but they only want praise. 6 |
| • | The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth. 6 |
| • | You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance. 6 |
| • | When things are at their worst I find something always happens. 5 |
| • | The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned. 4 |
| • | It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive. 4 |
| • | He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it. 4 |
| • | Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner. 4 |
| • | There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved. 3 |
| • | An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones. 3 |
| • | I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't. 3 |
| • | There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action. 3 |
| • | I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present. 3 |
| • | 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. 3 |
| • | I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me. 3 |
| • | Impropriety is the soul of wit. 3 |
| • | We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits. 3 |
| • | Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other. 2 |
| • | As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue. 2 |
| • | It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. 2 |
| • | Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it. 2 |
| • | Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy. 2 |
| • | Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. 2 |
| • | The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill. 2 |
| • | If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write. 2 |
| • | At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely. 2 |
| • | It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up. 2 |
| • | It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. 2 |
| • | Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long. 2 |
| • | Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous. 2 |
Funny Quotes
| • | There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. 2 |
