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It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.
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
Anyone
Makes
Cannot
Character
Defects
Altogether
Dislike
Laugh
Laughing
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.
W. Somerset Maugham
The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
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
An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.
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
I happen to think we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.
W. Somerset Maugham
Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm aches, and still they love you.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Of course, it is one of the most absurd illusions of Christianity that they have souls.
W. Somerset Maugham
He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.
W. Somerset Maugham
A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.
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
There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.
W. Somerset Maugham
People who ask for your criticism want only praise.
W. Somerset Maugham
I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
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
I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.
W. Somerset Maugham
The highest activities of consciousness have their origins in physical occurrences of the brain, just as the loveliest melodies are not too sublime to be expressed by notes.
W. Somerset Maugham
When we come to judge others it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world.
W. Somerset Maugham
The value of money is that with it we can tell any man to go to the devil. It is the sixth sense which enables you to enjoy the other five.
W. Somerset Maugham
Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.
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
