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A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
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
Shows
Accident
Seems
Accidents
Writing
Seem
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Style
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More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is good to be on your guard against an Englishman who speaks French perfectly he is very likely to be a card-sharper or an attache in the diplomatic service.
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
The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
W. Somerset Maugham
Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.
W. Somerset Maugham
Illusions are like umbrellas - you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound.
W. Somerset Maugham
It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.'
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
Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature and the error is ineradicable.
W. Somerset Maugham
From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
W. Somerset Maugham
It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain
W. Somerset Maugham
Our natural egoism leads us to judge people by their relations to ourselves. We want them to be certain things to us, and for us that is what they are because the rest of them is no good to us, we ignore it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Comedy appeals to the collective mind of the audience and this grows fatigued while farce appeals to a more robust organ, their collective belly.
W. Somerset Maugham
Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.
W. Somerset Maugham
No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you.
W. Somerset Maugham
It's a funny thing about life if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
W. Somerset Maugham
She had no mercy. He looked at her neck and thought how he would like to jab it with the knife he had for his muffin. He knew enough anatomy to make pretty certain of getting the carotid artery. And at the same time he wanted to cover her pale, thin face with kisses.
W. Somerset Maugham
We are not the same persons this year as last nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
W. Somerset Maugham
Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
W. Somerset Maugham
