W. Somerset Maugham Quotes - Page 20

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• By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Actors, Know How, Knows

  W. Somerset Maugham (2010). “The Summing Up”, p.106, Random House

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• The audience is a very curious animal. It is shrewd rather than intelligent. Its mental capacity is less than that of its most intellectual members.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Animal, Intelligent, Intellectual

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

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• Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Thinking, Novelists, Fiction

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• Because a man can write great works he is none the less a man.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Greatness, Men

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

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• It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Government, Needs, May

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

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• The humorist has a good eye for the humbug; he does not always recognize the saint.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Humor, Eye, Doe

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• There is no more merit in being able to attach a correct description to a picture than in being able to find out what is wrong with a stalled motorcar. In each case it is special knowledge.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Knowledge, Special, Able

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• If truth is a value it is because it is true and not because it is brave to speak it.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Truth, Brave, Speak

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• The inclination to digress is human. But the dramatist must avoid it even more strenuously than the saint must avoid sin, for while sin may be venial, digression is mortal.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Saint, May, Sin

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

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• I knew that suffering did not enoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things...it made them less than men; and I wrote ferociously that we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Selfish, Men, Suffering Of Others

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

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• There are men who are possessed by an urge so strong to do some particular thing that they can't help themselves, they've got to do it. They're prepared to sacrifice everything to satisfy their yearning.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Strong, Writing, Sacrifice

  "The Razor's Edge". Book by W. Somerset Maugham, 1944.

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• I don't know why it is that the religious never ascribe common sense to God.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Religious, Common Sense, Common

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• It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Asking, Reason, Human Bondage

  W. Somerset Maugham (2017). “Of Human Bondage”, p.470, Open Road Media

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• It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Character, Yield, Harmony

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

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• The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Ideas, Brain

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• Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Phrases, Tests, Easy

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• I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Atheism

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.149, Diversion Books

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• Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Men, Atheism, Needs

  W. Somerset Maugham (2009). “Christmas Holiday”, p.228, Random House

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• The artist can within limits make what he likes of his life... It is only the artist, and maybe the criminal, who can make his own.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Artist, Atheism, Criminals

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• The arguments for immortality, weak when you take them one by one, are no more cogent when you take them together... For my part, I cannot see how consciousness can persist when its physical basis has been destroyed, and I am too sure of the interconnection of my body and my mind to think that any survival of my my consciousness apart from my body would be in any sense a survival of myself.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Thinking, Survival, Mind

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• I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Appreciation, Art, Long

  W. Somerset Maugham (2008). “The Razor's Edge”, p.22, Random House

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• D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Jobs, Children, Struggle

  W. Somerset Maugham (2013). “The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection”, p.2171, eBookIt.com

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• There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Distance, Thinking, Littles

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.363, Diversion Books

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• There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Heart, Winning, Would Be

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• Nothing more predisposes someone in our favour than to let him rob you a little.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Littles, Favour

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