Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too. [The human element]
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
Whether
Tact
Human
Element
Humans
Naturally
Much
Elements
Never
Worst
People
Knew
Quite
Acting
Tactful
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
A God that can be understood is no God. Who can explain the Infinite in words?
W. Somerset Maugham
Have common sense and stick to the point.
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
What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
W. Somerset Maugham
There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.
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
I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.
W. Somerset Maugham
The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.
W. Somerset Maugham
Great writers create writers of smaller gifts copy
W. Somerset Maugham
Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.
W. Somerset Maugham
We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
W. Somerset Maugham
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
W. Somerset Maugham
The humour of Dostoievsky is the humour of a barloafer who ties a kettle to a dog's tail.
W. Somerset Maugham
Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.
W. Somerset Maugham
Because a man can write great works he is none the less a man.
W. Somerset Maugham
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
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
The humorist has a good eye for the humbug he does not always recognize the saint.
W. Somerset Maugham
People who ask for your criticism want only praise.
W. Somerset Maugham
Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.
W. Somerset Maugham