Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.
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
Mediocrity
Cruel
Temper
Improve
Discover
Late
Doe
Bondage
More quotes by 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
To write simply is as difficult as to be good.
W. Somerset Maugham
Refecting on the high divorce rate in America as contrasted with England American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers
W. Somerset Maugham
The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.
W. Somerset Maugham
When a man's in love, he at once makes a pedestal of the Ten Commandments and stands on the top of them with his arms akimbo. When a woman's in love she doesn't care two straws for Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not.
W. Somerset Maugham
Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.
W. Somerset Maugham
What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.
W. Somerset Maugham
A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
W. Somerset Maugham
Sherry, the civilized drink.
W. Somerset Maugham
Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
W. Somerset Maugham
It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind.
W. Somerset Maugham
Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.
W. Somerset Maugham
Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.
W. Somerset Maugham
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
W. Somerset Maugham
It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.
W. Somerset Maugham
No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.
W. Somerset Maugham
It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.
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
And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.
W. Somerset Maugham
