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To write simply is as difficult as to be good.
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
Difficult
Write
Writing
Good
Crafts
Simply
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
W. Somerset Maugham
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
W. Somerset Maugham
The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
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Evil is a necessary part of the order of the universe.
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Affection is created by habit, community of interests, convenience and the desire of companionship. It is a comfort rather than an exhilaration.
W. Somerset Maugham
A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.
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What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?
W. Somerset Maugham
The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain.
W. Somerset Maugham
As we grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and unreasonableness of human beings this indeed is the only excuse that offers for the middle-aged or elderly writer whose thoughts should more properly be turned to graver matters, occupying himself with the trivial concerns of imaginary people.
W. Somerset Maugham
Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.
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
Beauty is also a Gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful, if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.
W. Somerset Maugham
Men have ascribed to God imperfections that they would deplore in themselves.
W. Somerset Maugham
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell you what mutton tastes like. It is enough if he eats a cutlet. But he should do that.
W. Somerset Maugham
Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination it is the privilege of the artist that with him it is not as with other men an escape from reality, but the means by which he accedes to it.
W. Somerset Maugham
I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man, nothing but instant flight could save him.
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
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
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
