Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Things
Generally
People
Piece
Hero
Villains
Saws
Wholly
Easier
Villain
Pieces
Novelists
Talking
Heroes
Good
Speaking
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.
W. Somerset Maugham
No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham
There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.
W. Somerset Maugham
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
W. Somerset Maugham
The day broke grey and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.
W. Somerset Maugham
I am afraid of people with too much charm. They devour you. In the end you are made a sacrifice to the exercise of their fascinating gift and their insincerity.
W. Somerset Maugham
They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection but perhaps she does not always remember him.
W. Somerset Maugham
The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel.
W. Somerset Maugham
The great trues are too important to be new.
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 value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness.
W. Somerset Maugham
Culture is not just an ornament it is the expression of a nation's character, and at the same time it is a powerful instrument to mould character. The end of culture is right living.
W. Somerset Maugham
I'm only twenty-five. If I've made a mistake I have time to correct it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.
W. Somerset Maugham
A woman may be as wicked as she likes, but if she isn't pretty it won't do her much good.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.
W. Somerset Maugham
People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.
W. Somerset Maugham
