If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn't be so grossly over-populated as it is now


William Somerset Maugham

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
One minute before or after and it wouldnt of happend, is it random or fate?
MISS HANNAH HOWITT
My parents aren't married. And one of the reasons why they never got married is because they had...
KATE HUDSON
37. It is better to be single and unhappy than unhappily married.
JAMES C. DOBSON
From one tyrant to another. That is the world we know, now.
VERONICA ROTH
It seems to me that one thing people do over and over again is try to figure out how to get married,...
JOHN CUSACK
Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it appears to be.
JEFFREY FRY
this sounds a little simple, but I think if we didnt know illness we wouldnt really feel the exhilir...
PRISCILLA WARNER
I thought the Middle Eastern part [of President Bush's State of the Union speech] was grossly exagge...
FRANK VERRASTRO
When I die it will be game over,... but I know one life is short, to be selfish is not the best deci...
DEYTH BANGER
Most people are clever because they don't know how to be honest." William Gaddis, The Recognitions.
WILLIAM GADDIS
The whole point is to be interactive, so people can ask questions, share their experiences and hear ...
BONNIE JACOBS
The whole program has turned a corner. If people didn't know us before, they know us now.
WILL HENRY
You now have options in suburbia that never existed before. If you're nomadic in the tech world, you...
JOEL KOTKIN
The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, whic...
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
And now people all over the world know about us.
JACK KELLEY
In looking over what the TRPA proposed I found it to be grossly inadequate.
BEA EPSTEIN
We're stocking up now before it goes up more. This is expected. If it wasn't one tragedy it would be...
GEORGE WALLACE
Few people actually read. Instead, everyone likes pretending they read. If we spent as much time rea...
DAN WILBUR
Women waited 144 years before earning suffrage. If a mature, multiparty democracy was so darn easy, ...
THOMAS P.M. BARNETT
The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
He has the potential to be as good any of the past three we've had here. He's waited, waited and wai...
GREG PERRY
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't, they'd be married too.
H. L. MENCKEN
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
H. L. MENCKEN
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
You know, I don't think my music is important, I don't think it's changing the world, I ...
SUFJAN STEVENS
If people could write as much as they write on Facebook in one day, they could write books and be pu...
VALERIE ROSE STERRETT
It is as though we are understanding now what (William) Blake intuited, the senses were, in Eden, sp...
PETER REDGROVE
This would be a much better world if more married couples were as deeply in love as they are in debt...
EARL WILSON
Our life is a series of moments. Let them all go. Moments. All gathering towards this one.
NOW IS GOOD
The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They de...
OSCAR WILDE
If people like Edison had waited to make every - or Ben Franklin or some of those people had waited ...
JOHN GLENN
Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find faul...
CARDINAL J. NEWMAN
Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find faul...
CARDINAL NEWMAN
Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find faul...
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
No living being can ever “hitch” another living being. If one were able to “hitch” another, ...
DADA BHAGWAN
Bachelors know more about women than married men do. If they didn't, they'd be married too.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it ...
WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
H. L. MENCKEN
To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that i...
METRODORUS OF CHIOS
I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Remorse is regret that one waited so long to do it.
H. L. MENCKEN
Remorse is regret that one waited so long to do it
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Johnson himself turned out to be so many different characters he could have populated all of War and...
HERBERT MITGANG
If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, whe...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
William: It's as if I've taken love heroin, and now I can't ever have it again.
HUGH GRANT
Dora and I are now married, but just as happy as we were before.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
These are horrendous developments, whether you're a human or if you're a bird. Everyone wondered wha...
JOHN OXFORD
This is too much reality for a Friday.
AS GOOD AS IT GETS
More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they've got to go ...
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
One cause of anxiety and stress is when things that need to be done start to pile up over one anothe...
DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA
People go into that arena, and they know the fix is in. They know what pro wrestling or sports enter...
STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN
If one group of people can exterminate another in the name of so-called religion, the world has no h...
JEFF FORTENBERRY
A gang is the same as a wolf pack; gang members do not use their energies in friendship with one ano...
HANIEL LONG
William Bennett is my patron saint, one of them. Redd Foxx is another.
KINKY FRIEDMAN
I don't feel when I'm writing that I'm drawing from any other writer, but of course I mu...
CHARLES MCCARRY
We came into the world like brother and brother;And now let's go hand in hand, not one before anothe...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As we look around, it's very clear that in this world people do outrageous things to one another...
SHARON SALZBERG
People know if they want to watch something here, they've got only one alternative now.
CATHY ELLIOTT
He waited until we got our medals and pretty much every one had cleared out. I'm not sure if he want...
COURTNEY WHIDDEN
Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether your flattery is...
SAMUEL JOHNSON
If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, whe...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
People are after simplicity now. They learned over the past five years or so that investing isn't as...
JEFF MORTIMER
They jumped into summer and fall. They did everything together. It's not like they hadn't before, bu...
GALVIN MORRIS
We waited a long time, so if we wait another day or two or three, it's OK.
FELIPE ALOU
Today is about the now, the moment you live in, so do now what you want to do
SOTONYE ANGA
A lot of people give up just before they're about to make it. You know you never know when that ...
CHUCK NORRIS
It is almost as if you were frantically constructing another world while the world that you live in ...
TENNESSEE (THOMAS LANIER) WILLIAMS
It is almost as if you were frantically constructing another world while the world that you live in ...
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Good Friday Feast of William Law, Priest, Mystic, 1761 Commemoration of William of Ockham, Fra...
WILLIAM LAW
The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to ...
STEVE BALLMER
The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know...
JOHANN VON GOETHE
It's depressing. It is down right depressing because, you know, I was able to give my kids so much m...
ANDREA FULLER
No one can remain married today because they are not married to the one they love, they are married ...
SISTER SOULJAH
O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful, and after that, out o...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
It is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another.
CHARLES MONTESQUIEU
I am and always will be an HRH. But out of personal choice I like to be called William because that ...
PRINCE WILLIAM
Christmas is a season which almost all Christians observe in one way or another. Some keep it as a r...
J. C. RYLE
We felt they were 90 percent (effort) and we were hoping they would step it up that extra 10 percent...
GARY REYNOLDS
The way I look at it is everybody should have the right to get married, if they so choose.
ADAM LAMBERT
It is grossly inadequate and it diminishes the abuse that the people ... suffered.
TONY COTILLO
The people on earth thought her to be one of the countless stars, how little did they know—she is ...
RICHA PANDEY
Before I flew to space, I had no idea how comfortable it would be. I think if a lot of people know w...
DENNIS TITO
The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to ...
STEVE BALLMER
Internet journalism is not a world we know very well at all. It's conducted more on the screen a...
IAN HISLOP
A strike would be moot unless they waited until GM was back in production after the Flint strikes. I...
DAVID HEALY
People who really want to make a difference in the world usually do it, in one way or another. And I...
BETH CLARK
They actually owe me a refund now. I overpaid without realizing it. This is all from old taxes, it's...
ALAN GELL
…People are rivers, always ready to move from one state of being into another. It is not fair, to ...
KATHLEEN WINTER
Why is it that the right people never wind up together? Why are people so afraid to leave a relation...
STEPHANIE PERKINS
Intelligent people know they are intelligent. They also know that one person cannot know all, hence ...
LYNSAY SANDS
Study after study has demonstrated that people are better off financially, healthier, happier if the...
MALCOLM TURNBULL
Today, as never before, the fates of men are so intimately linked to one another that a disaster for...
NATALIA GINZBURG
I would like to say how much I resent people who say of the Islamic Republic that this is our cultur...
AZAR NAFISI
I heard we'll get you a pass because we know you're married to a black woman. You're married to a si...
BLAIR UNDERWOOD
Nothing would be done at all if a man waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fau...
CARDINAL NEWMAN
Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave scho...
SIR WILLIAM HALEY
Before I committed, I wanted to make sure when the initial high went down, it was still going to be ...
ANTHONY DIXON
Instead of following one another the sounds overlap; a sound which is acoustically perceived as comi...
ROMAN JAKOBSON

More William Somerset Maugham

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is err...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Money is like a sixth sense - and you can't make use of the other five without it
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that ...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselve...
WILLIAM 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...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who w...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Resignation is the timid sign of courage
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate m...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Tears are words the heart can't express
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Common sense and good nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knowswhat they are.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but th...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know the...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
To write simply is as difficult as to be good
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
WILLIAM 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...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantag...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humor.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only tha...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries o...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The writer is more concerned to know than to judge
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches them tolerance.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Genius is talent provided with ideals.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The value of art is not beauty, but right action
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The highest activities of consciousness have their origins in physical occurrences of the brain just...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also f...
WILLIAM 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...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
We do not write as we want to but as we can
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It wasn't until quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, "I don't know
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in ...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It's no good crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Tolerance is only another name for indifference
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is ...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Sentimentality is only sentiment that rubs you up the wrong way
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the ...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
I don't know why it is that the religious never ascribe common sense to God
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a senten...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Women's hearts are like old china, none the worse for a break or two
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Writing is the supreme solace.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a ...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be ...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Men are passionate, men are weak, men are stupid, men are pitiful; to bring to bear on them anything...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacri...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows ...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to acc...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
A woman may be as wicked as she likes, but if she isn't pretty it won't do her much good
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her, but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Love is what happens to a man and woman who don't know each other
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The degree of a nation's civilization is marked by its disregard for the necessities of existence.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradic...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The well-dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Only a mediocre person is always at his best
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
There are two good things in life freedom of thought and freedom of action
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all of the miserie...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The crown of literature is poetry.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is that there is very little about which ...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large wi...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Love is only the dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actuall...
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Tolerance is another word for indifference.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
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