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The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
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
Meaning
Education
Reading
Book
Important
Thing
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.
W. Somerset Maugham
The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
W. Somerset Maugham
It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.
W. Somerset Maugham
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.
W. Somerset Maugham
No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention.
W. Somerset Maugham
The nature of men and women - their essential nature - is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.
W. Somerset Maugham
The drama is make-believe. It does not deal with truth but with effect.
W. Somerset Maugham
Throw yourself into the hurly-burly of life. It doesn't matter how many mistakes you make, what unhappiness you have to undergo. It is all your material ... Don't wait for experience to come to you go out after experience. Experience is your material.
W. Somerset Maugham
When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
W. Somerset Maugham
The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.
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
It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.
W. Somerset Maugham
The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
W. Somerset Maugham
It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
W. Somerset Maugham
The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.
W. Somerset Maugham
Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
Thank God, I can look at a sunset now without having to think how to describe it
W. Somerset Maugham
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
W. Somerset Maugham
