FastSaying

An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.


W. Somerset Maugham

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JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the
personality of the artist; and if that is ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The way a book is read - which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book - can have as much...
NORMAN COUSINS You don't find interesting stuff because you don't search enough, ... every book has it's own lesson...
DEYTH BANGER The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM An unread book does nobody any good. Stories happen in the mind of a reader, not among symbols print...
BRANDON MULL Write it down now! You may never know who will read it tomorrow!
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH There's something special about writing by hand, writing with a fountain pen, and there's so...
JOE HALDEMAN A writer stops writing the moment he or she puts the last full stop to their text, and at that point...
ALBERTO MANGUEL You are your greatest product and behind every book lies an author who wrote it.
GERALDINE SOLON The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time an...
LIN YUTANG I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, I wil...
ROBERTSON DAVIES There outside there is a lot of stuff which you learn, the clock illusion, that you live in the past...
DEYTH BANGER The author is at one end of the experience of writing and the reader is at the other, and the book i...
HELEN HUMPHREYS When the U.S. Government shows a proper appreciation of the services of the Negro who has never fail...
FRANCIS J. GRIMKE That the author is speaking only to us, that he is writing only for us, that no one on Earth has the...
ADAM LANGER Most people suspend their judgment till somebody else has expressed his own and then they repeat it.
ERNEST DIMNET No book can be written till it wants to be written, till it shouts to be written, and raises up a pe...
JYOTI ARORA I spent many years writing and directing in radio drama, so I am comfortable with an audience or a m...
GUY GAVRIEL KAY If a reader likes a particular author, they keep reading all his books, and if the supply is not kep...
RAVI SUBRAMANIAN Do. Then talk. In that order.
SOTERO M LOPEZ II I don't feel when I'm writing that I'm drawing from any other writer, but of course I mu...
CHARLES MCCARRY There's something about the idea of writing, and thinking about writing as a form of prayer - th...
RUTH OZEKI Experience is an author’s most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and th...
MARK TWAIN It eventually appeared to be me, cinematically. When I was writing it I was actually an author, you ...
STEVE MARTIN From the dawn of civilization it is the will of Man that has propelled him forward. Man progressed f...
AVIJEET DAS Just like any one of us, they started with no road map or guarantee of success. But they went out an...
CAMILLE SWEENEY Reach out and help others. If you have the power to make someone happy, do it. Be a vessel, be the c...
GERMANY KENT 6 Ways To Give Your Mind A Break:

1. Stop stressing
2. Stop worrying
3. Give re...
GERMANY KENT My mother was born in the year 1899 and I was sitting there on New Year's Day in 1999 saying, 'God, ...
TED KOPPEL When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself,he is very careful about how much he sp...
MILTON FRIEDMAN Happy be the reader plunged into her book who forgot the world and whom world forgot.
GABRIELLE DUBOIS Nothing leaves a scar upon an Authors heart more than a book they've written with purpose going unre...
MARK W. BOYER There are so many things we do in life that define the real meaning of our lives. There are so many ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH I'm a writer because I love reading. I love the conversation between a reader and a writer, and ...
GARTH STEIN Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON An unread author is an author who is a victim of the worst kind of censorship, indifference - a cens...
OCTAVIO PAZ When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself,
he is very careful about how much ...
MILTON FRIEDMAN Follow your instincts. Do the kind of writing you love to do and do best. 'Stiff' was an odd...
MARY ROACH If modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they ...
SARAH FIELDING When a book leaves its author's desk it changes. Even before anyone has read it, before eyes other t...
SALMAN RUSHDIE I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person i...
POPE FRANCIS Sometimes shit's gotta be done and I just fuckin' do it!
MANUEL MONGRAIN 'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be conf...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON Book tours are almost designed to beat out of an author any affection he has for his book.
MICHAEL LEWIS A book is one of the most patient of all man's inventions. Centuries mean nothing to a well-made boo...
LAWRENCE CLARK POWELL Everyone has a gift.
It's up to you to decide what you do with it.
ANTHONY T. HINCKS This world is a joke, and I'm in it
OLIWAH GOUDEE We held hands and it took about an hour and a half for his blood to enter my system. His blood cells...
KEVIN HEARN Maybe that's it, [...] [w]ith what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it i...
DAVID LEVITHAN If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are ...
THOMAS CARLYLE An unread book does nobody any good
BRANDON MULL Your love to me was like an unread book . . .
COUNTEE CULLEN Do the thing and you will have the power.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establi...
JORGE LUIS BORGES Do you know anything about hearts, Jona? The Senta know hearts. Hearts are not one organ. Inside a m...
J.M. MCDERMOTT If it's what you do and you can do it, then you do it.
VAN MORRISON Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
MARK TWAIN Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
RAOUL VANEIGEM Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
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ED DOWNEY To stand on the
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ASK AND IT IS GIVEN 'Flaubert's Parrot' is an amphibious book in which what appears to be a personal essay a...
ALVARO ENRIGUE If you want a revenge, don't hold it. It poisons you.
Either you just let the grudge go, or mak...
TOBA BETA Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistr...
WINSTON CHURCHILL Determined eyes see less sleep; a focused mind has less time for idleness. Hearts filled with tenaci...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH dont wait for next minute, next hour, next day, next week, next year, just do it if you want to do i...
ANON QUOTER Do it and they will follow
CHARMAINE J. FORDE Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s quite possible to do anything...
JOHN LENNON Fiction may be about lying – on the surface, anyway – but fiction is about hiding the truth behi...
STACIA KANE Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistr...
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistre...
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL A lot of teenagers write to me and say "I want to write a book. I want to get published." And those ...
MAUREEN JOHNSON We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.
THOMAS CARLYLE Rise up & attack the day with Passion. The struggle you're in today is developing the strength y...
NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO I've never believed it's a fiction writer's job to create an exact replica of the past, ...
MOLLY ANTOPOL An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better...
TS (THOMAS STEARNS) ELIOT The young gentlemen who came calling seemed especially puzzling. They sat in their velvet shirts and...
PATRICIA A. MCKILLIP It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless ...
MOKOKOMA MOKHONOANA After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to...
ROBERT BENCHLEY Young people," McDonald said contemptuously. "You always think there's something to find out."
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LORI WILDE ...the secret to writing is to get your own pain - shout it out till it hurts your throat - weep it ...
JOHN GEDDES My partner, Joe, spends a lot of his time in Italy and has grown up in an Italian family, but it's m...
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DEYTH BANGER Tomorrow is promised to no one. Prioritize today accordingly.
GINA GREENLEE My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make...
DAVID MCCULLOUGH From an early age, I had the idea that writing was truth-telling. It's on the record. Everybody ...
EDMUND WHITE I personally am a 'discovery writer,' as we're termed, someone who plans the book by wri...
KATHARINE KERR Name the fears that are holding you back. It's the equivalent of flooding the boogeyman with light.
GINA GREENLEE The ego was nothing more than just a thought till you turn it into an action...
PHILIP T. M. The ego was nothing more than just a thought till you turned it into an action...
PHILIP T. M. If you can't do it today, You can not do it in your whole life! Do it NOW!
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S. T. JOSHI

More W. Somerset Maugham

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W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
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W SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM We know our friends by their defects rather than their merits.
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W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Love is what happens to a man and woman who don't know each other.
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W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantag...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There are two good things in life -- freedom of thought and freedom of action.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that...
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W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without d...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It was a cold morning, and he shivered a little; but he had been taught by his uncle that his prayer...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me n...
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W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM 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...
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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.
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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.
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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 Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the ...
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W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The well-dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM For the memory of love is sweet, though the love itself were in vain. And what I have lost of pleasu...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The end of culture is right living.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I knew that suffering did not enoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It abs...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifice...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Bo...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When you're eighteen your emotions are violent, but they're not durable.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going dow...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Tao. Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. I...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The crown of literature is poetry.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering f...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pl...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mo...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know the...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain su...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with i...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that havi...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young ju...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It's a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, but few are chosen.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is very difficult to know people and I don't think one can ever really know any but one's own cou...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persis...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dep...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the comm...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM To write simply is as difficult as to be good.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is funny about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the very best you will very often get i...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. H...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Love is a dirty trick played on us to achieve the continuation of the species.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM We have long passed the Victorian era, when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a ba...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacri...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches them tolerance.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large wi...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actuall...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by make-believe.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the wo...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and wo...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is er...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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 It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty o...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is er...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who has lost it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man w...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Life isn't long enough for love and art.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When things are at their worst I find something always happens.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, pe...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to th...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefo...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesth...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know the...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for noth...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM We didn't think much in the air corps of a fellow who wangled a cushy job out of his C.O. by butteri...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM