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Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.
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
Unaffected
Usage
Phrase
Phrases
Prefer
Test
Tests
Easy
Grammatical
More quotes by 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 trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
W. Somerset Maugham
If truth is a value it is because it is true and not because it is brave to speak it.
W. Somerset Maugham
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
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
The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice
W. Somerset Maugham
Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.
W. Somerset Maugham
If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
W. Somerset Maugham
I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man, nothing but instant flight could save him.
W. Somerset Maugham
Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experience he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.
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
Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.
W. Somerset Maugham
A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
W. Somerset Maugham
We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.
W. Somerset Maugham
A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Life is really very fantastic, and one has to have a peculiar sense of humour to see the fun of it. [Virtue]
W. Somerset Maugham
She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.
W. Somerset Maugham
He exulted in the possession of himself once more he realized how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called love he had had enough of it he did not want to be in love anymore if love was that.
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
