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It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.
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
Many
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Astonishing
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More quotes by 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
What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?
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
We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
W. Somerset Maugham
In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.
W. Somerset Maugham
It requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest.
W. Somerset Maugham
But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up.
W. Somerset Maugham
There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.
W. Somerset Maugham
The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
W. Somerset Maugham
In religion above all things the only thing of use is an objective truth. The only God that is of use is a being who is personal, supreme and good, and whose existence is as certain as that two and two make four.
W. Somerset Maugham
I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas.
W. Somerset Maugham
The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.
W. Somerset Maugham
Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even to the most prudent men.' Simon gave him a strange, one might even have thought a hostile, look. I should tear it out of my heart as I'd wrench out of my mouth a rotten tooth.
W. Somerset Maugham
But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you it may have other and much more profound meanings for the critic, but at second-hand they can be of small service to you.
W. Somerset Maugham
Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
W. Somerset Maugham
When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?
W. Somerset Maugham
We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
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
Thank God, I can look at a sunset now without having to think how to describe it
W. Somerset Maugham
Sherry, the civilized drink.
W. Somerset Maugham