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The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.
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
Beauty
Names
Many
Ideal
Ideals
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
A woman may be as wicked as she likes, but if she isn't pretty it won't do her much good.
W. Somerset Maugham
He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.
W. Somerset Maugham
Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell you what mutton tastes like. It is enough if he eats a cutlet. But he should do that.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham
It takes two to make a love affair and a mans meat is too often a woman's poison.
W. Somerset Maugham
A good Havana is one of the best pleasures that I know.
W. Somerset Maugham
It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.
W. Somerset Maugham
Writing is the supreme solace.
W. Somerset Maugham
What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
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
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
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
The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice
W. Somerset Maugham
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
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
It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind.
W. Somerset Maugham
Sherry, the civilized drink.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
W. Somerset Maugham
The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel.
W. Somerset Maugham