W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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"Do you like card tricks?" "No, I hate card tricks," I answered. "Well, I`ll just show you this one." He showed me three.
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She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.
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It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
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When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.
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You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.
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A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.
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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.
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To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
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I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.
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The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were: Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.' My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said. My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent.
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When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.
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Beauty is also a Gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful, if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.
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The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too. [The human element]
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But I am not sure it would contain any short stories. For the short story is a minor art, and it must content itself with moving, exciting and amusing the reader. ...I do not think that there is any (short story) that will give the reader that thrill, that rapture, that fruitful energy which great art can produce.
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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.
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The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so, and by the manipulation of his plot, he can engage the reader's attention so that he does not perceive the violence that has been done to him.
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Evil can be condoned only if in the beyond it is compensated by good and god himself needs immortality to vindicate his ways to man.
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You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now.
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But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the design.
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Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm aches, and still they love you.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Of course, it is one of the most absurd illusions of Christianity that they have souls.
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Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.
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There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?
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I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.
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Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.