W. Somerset Maugham Quotes - Page 13

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• The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Funny, Reflection, People

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• Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experience he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Pain, Writing, Journey

  W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.6, Courier Corporation

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• I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Inspirational, Life, Believe

  W. Somerset Maugham (2010). “The Summing Up”, p.70, Random House

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• No man in his heart is quite so cynical as a well-bred woman.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Heart, Men, Cynical

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• It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Book, Needs, Astonishing

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• It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Lovely, Self Pity, Get Up

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• We do not write as we want, but as we can.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  W. Somerset Maugham (1941). “the Gentleman in the Parlour”

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• It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Faults, Sin, Shocked

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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• For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Sports, Children, School

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• I don't understand anything. Life is so strange. I feel like some one who's lived all his life by a duck-pond and suddenly is shown the sea. It makes me a little breathless, and yet it fills me with elation. I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm beginning to feel a new courage. I feel like one of those old sailors who set sail for undiscovered seas and I think my soul hankers for the unknown.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Thinking, Sea, Ducks

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• Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Dirty, Hands, Grace

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• You see, money to you means freedom; to me it means bondage.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Mean, Bondage

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• To write simply is as difficult as to be good.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Crafts, Difficult

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• Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  People, Wells, Knows

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• You cannot write well or much (and I venture the opinion that you cannot write well unless you write much) unless you form a habit.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing

  "The Summing Up".

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• There are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Perfect, Comfort, Picnics

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• Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Broken, Habit

  W. Somerset Maugham (2010). “The Summing Up”, p.179, Random House

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• Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Funny, Time, Elderly

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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• Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Art, Mean, Imagination

  W. Somerset Maugham (2009). “The Magician: A Novel”, p.67, The Floating Press

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• What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Mean, Men, Atheism

  "A Writer's Notebook (1901)". Book by W. Somerset Maugham, 1946.

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• You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Cynical, Criticism, Doe

  W. Somerset Maugham (1930). “Cakes and Ale”

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• There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Wall, Mountain, Depth

  W. Somerset Maugham (2015). “On a Chinese Screen”, p.62, Simon and Schuster

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• Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Beauty, Beautiful, Fashion

  W. Somerset Maugham (2006). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.53, Courier Corporation

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• It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Time, Lost Youth, Age

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.164, Diversion Books

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• No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Action, Conventions

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