W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
-
When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
-
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
-
Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
-
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
-
Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
-
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
-
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
-
One of the falsest of proverbs is that you must lie on the bed that you have made. The experience of life shows that people are constantly doing things which must lead to disaster, and yet by some chance manage to evade the result of their folly.
-
When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.
-
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
-
It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.'
-
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
-
There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.
-
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
-
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
-
You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.
-
It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.
-
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
-
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
-
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
-
It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
-
What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
-
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
-
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.