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Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
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
Still
Permanent
Anything
Foolish
Nothing
Delight
Take
Asks
World
Lasts
Last
Impermanence
Stills
Razors
Change
Surely
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.
W. Somerset Maugham
Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
W. Somerset Maugham
Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.
W. Somerset Maugham
I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas.
W. Somerset Maugham
Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.
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
He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.
W. Somerset Maugham
A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.
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
A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
W. Somerset Maugham
Tolerance is another word for indifference.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is no more merit in being able to attach a correct description to a picture than in being able to find out what is wrong with a stalled motorcar. In each case it is special knowledge.
W. Somerset Maugham
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.
W. Somerset Maugham
The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
W. Somerset Maugham
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.
W. Somerset Maugham
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.
W. Somerset Maugham
