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The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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
Wit
Ability
Funny
Serviceable
Science
Quotations
Inspirational
Quote
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More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of thought and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.
W. Somerset Maugham
I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
W. Somerset Maugham
I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.
W. Somerset Maugham
Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.
W. Somerset Maugham
A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
W. Somerset Maugham
It requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest.
W. Somerset Maugham
It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.
W. Somerset Maugham
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
W. Somerset Maugham
By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few.
W. Somerset Maugham
The life force is vigorous. The delight that accompanies it counter-balances all the pains and hardships that confront men. It makes life worth living.
W. Somerset Maugham
There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.
W. Somerset Maugham
We didn't think much in the air corps of a fellow who wangled a cushy job out of his C.O. by buttering him up. It was hard for me to believe that God thought much of a man who tried to wangle salvation by fulsome flattery. I should have thought the worship most pleasing to him was to do your best according to your lights.
W. Somerset Maugham
It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Nothing more predisposes someone in our favour than to let him rob you a little.
W. Somerset Maugham
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
W. Somerset Maugham
No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess.
W. Somerset Maugham
Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well
W. Somerset Maugham
There are men who are possessed by an urge so strong to do some particular thing that they can't help themselves, they've got to do it. They're prepared to sacrifice everything to satisfy their yearning.
W. Somerset Maugham
You cannot write well or much (and I venture the opinion that you cannot write well unless you write much) unless you form a habit.
W. Somerset Maugham
