A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.


William Somerset Maugham

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When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she ha...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries o...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is fooli...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradic...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The great critic...must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Perfection has one grave defect. It is apt to be dull.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, i...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humor.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The Americans who are the most efficient people on earth...have invented so wide a range of pithy an...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate m...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clich?s that...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to acc...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made o...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Lady Hodmarsh and the duchess immediately assumed the clinging affability that persons of rank assum...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest p...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammere...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
People who ask for your criticism want only praise.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an aut...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are...
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
The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the b...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the uni...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasin...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and bef...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
You can do anything in this world if you are prepares to take the consequences.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Money is like a sixth sense, and you can't make use of the other five without it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Wives are people who feel they don't dance enough.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM