W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
-
Do you absolutely despise me, Walter?" "No." He hesitated and his voice was strange. "I despise myself.
-
I can only guess that it made the world he went back to...strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he even enjoyed it, it remained utterly remote. I think it had lost sense for him. In his heart was the reflection of a lovely dream that he could never quite recall.
-
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?
-
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.
-
I promised myself that if ever I had some money that I would savor a cigar each day after lunch and dinner. This is the only resolution of my youth that I have kept, and the only realized ambition which has not brought disillusion.
-
There's nothing the world loves more than a ready-made description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.
-
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.
-
The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.
-
A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.
-
Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.
-
Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.
-
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.
-
I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to the universities go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene ... They are scum.
-
I am sick of this way of life. The weariness and sadness of old age make it intolerable. I have walked with death in hand, and death's own hand is warmer than my own. I don't wish to live any longer.
-
What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.
-
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.