Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.
W. Somerset Maugham
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Smoke
Air
Lost
Littles
Little
Men
Life
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
if you'd ever had a grown-up daughter you'd know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her - well, it's much better to pretend you're the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.
W. Somerset Maugham
It was like making a blunder at a party there was nothing to do about it, it was dreadfully mortifying, but it showed a lack of sense to ascribe too much importance to it.
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
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
Clearly much that seemed valid seemed so only because he had been taught it from earliest youth.
W. Somerset Maugham
I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.
W. Somerset Maugham
Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.
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
The artist can within limits make what he likes of his life... It is only the artist, and maybe the criminal, who can make his own.
W. Somerset Maugham
A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.
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
Evil is a necessary part of the order of the universe.
W. Somerset Maugham
I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
W. Somerset Maugham
There was once a professor of law who said to his students. When you are fighting a case, if you have facts on your side hammer them into the jury, and if you have the law on your side hammer it into the judge. But if you have neither the facts nor the law, asked one of his listeners? Then hammer the hell into the table, answered the professor.
W. Somerset Maugham
I knew that suffering did not enoble it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things...it made them less than men and I wrote ferociously that we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
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 artist produces for the liberation of his soul.
W. Somerset Maugham
For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
W. Somerset Maugham
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
W. Somerset Maugham
The Riviera isn't only a sunny place for shady people.
W. Somerset Maugham
