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It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred 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
Wells
Well
Writing
Good
Men
Resemble
Bred
Prose
Conversation
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
W. Somerset Maugham
Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well
W. Somerset Maugham
I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
W. Somerset Maugham
An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.
W. Somerset Maugham
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos.
W. Somerset Maugham
The great man is too often all of a piece it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you.
W. Somerset Maugham
Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.
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
There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.
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
For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
W. Somerset Maugham
Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.
W. Somerset Maugham
One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.
W. Somerset Maugham
I wonder how anyone can have the face to condemn others when he reflects upon his own thoughts.
W. Somerset Maugham
A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.
W. Somerset Maugham
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. Somerset Maugham
It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.
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
The inclination to digress is human. But the dramatist must avoid it even more strenuously than the saint must avoid sin, for while sin may be venial, digression is mortal.
W. Somerset Maugham
Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.
W. Somerset Maugham
