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I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
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
Thing
Time
Mindfulness
Think
Everlasting
Thinking
Management
Matters
Present
Past
Matter
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.
W. Somerset Maugham
Advice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
W. Somerset Maugham
D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.
W. Somerset Maugham
I promised myself that if ever I had some money that I would savor a cigar each day after lunch and dinner. This is the only resolution of my youth that I have kept, and the only realized ambition which has not brought disillusion.
W. Somerset Maugham
When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?
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
If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.
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
There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.
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
The life force is vigorous. The delight that accompanies it counter-balances all the pains and hardships that confront men. It makes life worth living.
W. Somerset Maugham
But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you it may have other and much more profound meanings for the critic, but at second-hand they can be of small service to you.
W. Somerset Maugham
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
Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
W. Somerset Maugham
Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.
W. Somerset Maugham
First, cut out all the wisdom, then cut out all the adjectives.
W. Somerset Maugham
Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.
W. Somerset Maugham
If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.
W. Somerset Maugham
What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?
W. Somerset Maugham
I prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool.
W. Somerset Maugham
