I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
W. Somerset Maugham
Related
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM Take me to the height where success would seek my help to succeed!
I ARE I don't feel when I'm writing that I'm drawing from any other writer, but of course I mu...
CHARLES MCCARRY The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Women are more skilled than men at making gossip entertaining.
KATE FOX Ezekiel Boone's books, starting with 'The Hatching' series, are meant to be big, sprawli...
ALEXI ZENTNER Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the ...
E.B. (ELWYN BROOKS) WHITE Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the ...
E. B. WHITE Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of t...
E. B. WHITE Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the
people are right more than half of ...
ALFRED EMANUEL SMITH Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of t...
E. B. WHITE We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with...
SENECA (SENECA THE ELDER) All modern MIDI synthesizers are capable of polyphony, which means they can play more than one note ...
CHARLES PETZOLD Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.
STEPHEN LEACOCK Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all wer...
BLAISE PASCAL Audiences are so much more sophisticated than they've ever been. They expect a lot more. I don...
MAGGIE Q Of the 60 movies I wrote, more than half were written in two weeks or less.
BEN HECHT How fast you go. You arrive at a conclusion much sooner than I would permit myself to do.
AGATHA CHRISTIE Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history
CHAMFORT Lawyers are like morticians. We all need one sooner or later, but better later than sooner.
EILEEN GOUDGE More modern poetry is written than read.
P. J. O'ROURKE There is nothing more entertaining then leaving someone speechless. Yet, there is nothing sadder tha...
SHANNON L. ALDER Nothing brings more pain than too much pleasure; nothing more bondage than too much liberty, (or lib...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than ...
MARK VONNEGUT …where the two cities are close up they make for interference patterns, harder to read or predict....
CHINA MIéVILLE I think now more than ever, we need to make commercials that are poignant, strong and entertaining.
PATRICK KNOLL I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
SAMUEL JOHNSON I look for the dark story, where something secret was done. I read and read and pick up the trail of...
ALAN FURST With my intensity and athletic ability, I think that would be a natural switch, ... I'm just as fast...
KYLE TURLEY Active adults see themselves as being much younger than they are. And they're much more active than ...
CASEY HILL nothing grieves more deeply or pathetically than one half of a great love that isn’t meant to be.
GREGORY DAVID ROBERTS Death is nothing more than a reminder that life is short and that you are on borrowed time, so don't...
SYNECA DE JORMUNGAND I directly asked respondents why they behaved uncivilly.More than half claimed it was because they a...
CHRISTINE PORATH 'Content is King,' and with more screens needing entertaining content now than at any time i...
MARK BURNETT It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.
JEAN WEBSTER I would say we are much more on that side . . . The administration (of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.) is sup...
CARLOS BRACERAS There are only a few things that are more entertaining than watching a cat trying to run across a fr...
DAVID C. HOLLEY Publishers have realized that, unlike the previous time period, American teenagers are both smarter ...
TAMORA PIERCE Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we ...
J.B.S. HALDANE More than half of them thought they only had asthma when they were having symptoms. They are treatin...
DR. ETHAN HALM I remember my mother telling me earlier that we are nothing more than our stories. I look at the mas...
CARRIE RYAN at a savings of more than half or one third of what they were paying in the United States.
BRIAN SCHWEITZER They have all the capacity coming online, but they are going to need it sooner rather than later.
JOSEPH UNSWORTH It’s this or nothing at all.
R.J. GROVES When all are talking, no one is probably listening; but if no one is speaking then perhaps all are o...
ANUJ SOMANY So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been ...
VIKRAM SETH We have now been able to track star formation in galaxies out to modest distances, more than half th...
DAVID KOO I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than tha...
JAMES A. BALDWIN I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than tha...
JAMES ARTHUR BALDWIN Nothing tires a man more than to be grateful all the time.
ED HOWE I would rather hurt, than feel nothing at all.
LADY ANTEBELLUM All living things are gnarly, in that they inevitably do things that are much more complex than one ...
RUDY RUCKER Partial truths or half-truths are often more insidious than total falsehoods.
SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen. If only they wou...
ROALD DAHL I would not have one as a pet. The only things they think about are food, reproduction and survival....
GARY MORSE I think that winning the White House is about more than just entertaining a large audience.
MITCH MCCONNELL A single moment spent in a business meeting or at a pub is more than enough to reveal the basic huma...
JEFF LINDSAY Why don't people take the trouble to let you know that they are alive? It is so much more import...
ELIZABETH BIBESCO I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do mor...
J. B. PRIESTLEY I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do mor...
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY We're all animals, high school is animals, but some of us are more animal than others. Like in 'Anim...
NED VIZZINI Of the individual poems, some are more lyric and some are more descriptive or narrative. Each poem i...
MARILYN HACKER Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs
C.S. LEWIS There are still some people out there who believe comic books are nothing more than, well, comic boo...
JOHN RIDLEY I know a lot of people that had one cancer that are not alive today. I've had three. So my glass...
HAMILTON JORDAN Novels are longer than life.
NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY When I look at all these professional athletes when they are 50 or 45 years old, they have knees tha...
BODE MILLER I learned that people are much more game to mock their own personas than you would think.
LENA DUNHAM Crash rates are much higher when teenagers travel together. In 2004, a little more than half of all ...
CATHERINE ROSSI The story goes as the line follow... alone... loony....
...
That's what's happening....
DEYTH BANGER Save your ass, give my ass.... what a friend you are...
DEYTH BANGER Cynicism, I contend, is the wailing of someone who believes that things are, or should be, or could ...
WALTER BECKER Leaving it to them would certainly be a big mistake until they're restructured and much more effecti...
ALLEN MELTZER I would bet you there weren't more than 20 or 30 people who read it.
ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ Boards are much more aggressive than they were.
BARRY BARBASH What will make you a star is in you
SOTONYE ANGA The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say...
CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE Ideas are more dangerous than an unsheathed sword in this world, half of them are forbidden, the oth...
PHILIPPA GREGORY From my experience, politicians are much more uncomfortable being made fun of than they are being pr...
CARL HIAASEN There are quite a few actors in the business who are much more difficult than kids or monkeys.
PAUL HOGAN What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.
SAMUEL JOHNSON We just wore out. I could see that at halftime they were exhausted, and I was really concerned. Font...
FRANK JABBIA I cannot tell you how much all of this has meant to us, ... We come out here every night, and we are...
ERIN RUNNION No time better than the present,’ I always say. Or was that, ‘Nothing is better than a present�...
KAZA KINGSLEY Illegal firearms are a much more pervasive problem than they used to be,
JAMES BURKE Who dares deny that this is true:
The whole is more than all its parts?
A whole love than div...
ARTHUR DILLON I write about the period 1933-42, and I read books written during those years: books by foreign corr...
ALAN FURST God how I hate new countries: They are older than the old, more sophisticated, much more conceited, ...
D. H. (DAVID HERBERT) LAWRENCE God how I hate new countries: They are older than the old, more sophisticated, much more conceited, ...
D.H. LAWRENCE My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic l...
SCARLETT THOMAS I don't support the Americans any more and I, in many ways, would hope they would leave sooner rathe...
MICHAEL IGNATIEFF I think what we all are hoping for is resolution sooner rather than later. I'm not sure that Gore's ...
GREG VALLIERE Far more women read fiction than men, and because of this, novels have become marginalised as seriou...
SIRI HUSTVEDT It was only three at the half. They were ahead a little more than that at different time of the game...
KEVIN TONEY I've talked to several people at the mines, and with the gold prices, they get all the overtime they...
LISE THORSEN Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think...
C.S. LEWIS Fans this time around are a much angrier group than they were in '94,
BOB MAY When a child makes the type of progress Jason has, a barrier has been broken, and it simply affirms ...
CHARLES THOMAS There are more than 200,000 people in Maputo who are nothing more than parasites.
SAMORA MACHEL
More W. Somerset Maugham
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Writing is the supreme solace.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, on...
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of ligh...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the ba...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, ch...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Tolerance is another word for indifference.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead beca...
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 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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I learnt that men were moved by a savage egoism, that love was only the dirty trick nature played on...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Love is what happens to a man and woman who don't know each other.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened ...
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...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was ...
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...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM In the first place it's not true that people improve as you know them better: they don't. That's why...
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...
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 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 ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, ...
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 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 An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies a...
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