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It is not true that suffering ennobles the character happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
W. Somerset Maugham
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W. Somerset Maugham
Age: 90 †
Born: 1874
Born: January 1
Died: 1965
Died: January 1
Army Scout
Literary Critic
Novelist
Physician Writer
Playwright
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Paris
France
W. Somerset Maugham
Somerset Maugham
Life
Inspirational
Makes
True
Part
Ennobles
Doe
Vindictive
Character
Petty
Sometimes
Suffering
Men
Happiness
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
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
People who ask for your criticism want only praise.
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Women's hearts are like old china, none the worse for a break or two.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species.
W. Somerset Maugham
Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.
W. Somerset Maugham
People are always a little disconcerted when you don't recognize them, they are so important to themselves, it is a shock to discover of what small importance they are to others. [The human element]
W. Somerset Maugham
She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.
W. Somerset Maugham
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
W. Somerset Maugham
The humorist has a good eye for the humbug he does not always recognize the saint.
W. Somerset Maugham
A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
W. Somerset Maugham
If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
W. Somerset Maugham
I've met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation.
W. Somerset Maugham
I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to such a pass but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.
W. Somerset Maugham
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. Somerset Maugham
Life is really very fantastic, and one has to have a peculiar sense of humour to see the fun of it. [Virtue]
W. Somerset Maugham
The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.
W. Somerset Maugham
If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.
W. Somerset Maugham
Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.
W. Somerset Maugham
You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now.
W. Somerset Maugham
What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.
W. Somerset Maugham
