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In business sharp practice sometimes succeeds, but in art honesty is not only the best but the only policy.
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
Best
Succeeds
Sometimes
Sharp
Honesty
Succeed
Policy
Practice
Business
Art
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
There are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort.
W. Somerset Maugham
Advice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
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Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.
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
Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.
W. Somerset Maugham
When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.
W. Somerset Maugham
Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
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The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.
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We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.
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[Money] is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.
W. Somerset Maugham
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.
W. Somerset Maugham
I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
W. Somerset Maugham
She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.” Waddington, smiling, translated the question. “She says I’m good.” “As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue,” Kitty mocked.
W. Somerset Maugham
The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
W. Somerset Maugham
He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.
W. Somerset Maugham
As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.
W. Somerset Maugham
What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.
W. Somerset Maugham
