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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
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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
Rules
Idiosyncrasies
Tradition
Hides
Behavior
Conform
Community
Customs
Faces
Communities
Culture
Mask
Certain
Civilized
Mitigated
Men
Necessity
Conforming
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
A soul is a troublesome possession, and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.
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
The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.
W. Somerset Maugham
Refecting on the high divorce rate in America as contrasted with England American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers
W. Somerset Maugham
Women's hearts are like old china, none the worse for a break or two.
W. Somerset Maugham
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
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
You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack.
W. Somerset Maugham
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. Somerset Maugham
I don't know why it is that the religious never ascribe common sense to God.
W. Somerset Maugham
Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.
W. Somerset Maugham
Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.
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
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
The mathematician who after seeing Phedre asked: 'Qu'est que ca prouve?' was not such a fool as he has been generally made out. No one has ever been able to explain why the Doric temple of Paestum is more beautiful than a glass of cold beer except by bringing in considerations that have nothing to do with beauty.
W. Somerset Maugham
A state of reverie does not avoid reality, it accedes to reality.
W. Somerset Maugham
Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness.
W. Somerset Maugham
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
W. Somerset Maugham
Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.
W. Somerset Maugham
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul.
W. Somerset Maugham
