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It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.
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
Victory
Accept
Accepting
Happiness
Better
Victories
Might
Bondage
Many
Surrender
Defeat
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule.
W. Somerset Maugham
She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?
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Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.
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It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred man.
W. Somerset Maugham
The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.
W. Somerset Maugham
You can never know enough about your characters
W. Somerset Maugham
Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.
W. Somerset Maugham
Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.
W. Somerset Maugham
A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.
W. Somerset Maugham
It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him.
W. Somerset Maugham
For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.
W. Somerset Maugham
We Americans... like change. It is at once our weakness and our strength.
W. Somerset Maugham
The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were: Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.' My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said. My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent.
W. Somerset Maugham
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham
It's a funny thing about life if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
W. Somerset Maugham
There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.
W. Somerset Maugham
In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.
W. Somerset Maugham
I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
W. Somerset Maugham
There was once a professor of law who said to his students. When you are fighting a case, if you have facts on your side hammer them into the jury, and if you have the law on your side hammer it into the judge. But if you have neither the facts nor the law, asked one of his listeners? Then hammer the hell into the table, answered the professor.
W. Somerset Maugham
Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.
W. Somerset Maugham