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A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.
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
Smoke
Air
Lost
Littles
Little
Men
Life
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
W. Somerset Maugham
One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.
W. Somerset Maugham
As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.
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
It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.
W. Somerset Maugham
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.
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
What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.
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
I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.
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
Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?' The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly. Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.' Didn't you mean them?' At the moment.
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
He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
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
It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.
W. Somerset Maugham
For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.
W. Somerset Maugham
He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.
W. Somerset Maugham
The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too. [The human element]
W. Somerset Maugham
