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All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
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
Stories
Matter
Right
Arranging
Writing
Dictionary
Sentences
Words
Use
Found
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
W. Somerset Maugham
There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.
W. Somerset Maugham
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
W. Somerset Maugham
Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man who isn't quite so delightful but a little more sincere.
W. Somerset Maugham
People are always a little disconcerted when you don't recognize them, they are so important to themselves, it is a shock to discover of what small importance they are to others. [The human element]
W. Somerset Maugham
There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.
W. Somerset Maugham
The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.
W. Somerset Maugham
I'm not only my spirit buy my body, and who can decide how much I, my individual self, am conditioned by the accident of my body? Would Byron have been Byron but for his club foot, or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky without his epilepsy?
W. Somerset Maugham
The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.
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
In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.
W. Somerset Maugham
Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.
W. Somerset Maugham
The passing moment is all we can be sure of it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.
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
If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.
W. Somerset Maugham
The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain.
W. Somerset Maugham
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
W. Somerset Maugham
An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.
W. Somerset Maugham
I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.
W. Somerset Maugham
Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.
W. Somerset Maugham
