W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
-
Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.
-
What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
-
Comedy appeals to the collective mind of the audience and this grows fatigued; while farce appeals to a more robust organ, their collective belly.
-
It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind.
-
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.
-
Our natural egoism leads us to judge people by their relations to ourselves. We want them to be certain things to us, and for us that is what they are; because the rest of them is no good to us, we ignore it.
-
The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure; indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.
-
You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack.
-
Affection is created by habit, community of interests, convenience and the desire of companionship. It is a comfort rather than an exhilaration.
-
I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.
-
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.
-
It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.
-
Do you absolutely despise me, Walter?" "No." He hesitated and his voice was strange. "I despise myself.
-
With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself.
-
The normal is what you find but rarely. The normal is an ideal. It is a picture that one fabricates of the average characteristics of men, and to find them all in a single man is hardly to be expected.
-
The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.
-
It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.
-
A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.
-
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
-
You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.
-
For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.
-
Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.
-
In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.
-
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.