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The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness.
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
Culture
Goodness
Character
Personality
Nothing
Effects
Life
Value
Ennobles
Unless
Avails
Beauty
Strengthens
Values
Aim
Use
Effect
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
I wonder how anyone can have the face to condemn others when he reflects upon his own thoughts.
W. Somerset Maugham
She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.
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
Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.
W. Somerset Maugham
They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection but perhaps she does not always remember him.
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
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
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is bad enough to know the past it would be intolerable to know the future.
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
We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
W. Somerset Maugham
The officers saluted as she passed and gravely bowed. They walked back across the courtyard and got into their chairs. She saw Waddington light a cigarette. A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.
W. Somerset Maugham
Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.
W. Somerset Maugham
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
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
Never pause unless you have a reason for it, but when you pause, pause as long as you can.
W. Somerset Maugham
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. Somerset Maugham
I prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool.
W. Somerset Maugham
There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?
W. Somerset Maugham
I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man, nothing but instant flight could save him.
W. Somerset Maugham
