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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
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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
Character
Persons
Incongruous
Person
Plausible
Amazed
Traits
Yield
Harmony
Exist
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.
W. Somerset Maugham
A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.
W. Somerset Maugham
The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.
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
I am afraid of people with too much charm. They devour you. In the end you are made a sacrifice to the exercise of their fascinating gift and their insincerity.
W. Somerset Maugham
How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
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
The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
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
We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.
W. Somerset Maugham
For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.
W. Somerset Maugham
No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.
W. Somerset Maugham
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
W. Somerset Maugham
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.
W. Somerset Maugham
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
W. Somerset Maugham
You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now.
W. Somerset Maugham
Genius is talent provided with ideals.
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
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
W. Somerset Maugham
