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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
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More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
I knew that suffering did not enoble it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things...it made them less than men and I wrote ferociously that we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
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
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
W. Somerset Maugham
Evil is a necessary part of the order of the universe.
W. Somerset Maugham
The end of culture is right living
W. Somerset Maugham
We are not the same persons this year as last nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
W. Somerset Maugham
No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess.
W. Somerset Maugham
The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is no more merit in being able to attach a correct description to a picture than in being able to find out what is wrong with a stalled motorcar. In each case it is special knowledge.
W. Somerset Maugham
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.
W. Somerset Maugham
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham
The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
W. Somerset Maugham
The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?
W. Somerset Maugham
Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.
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
A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
W. Somerset Maugham
We Americans... like change. It is at once our weakness and our strength.
W. Somerset Maugham
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
W. Somerset Maugham
and he loved her suddenly because she loved him.
W. Somerset Maugham
Do you absolutely despise me, Walter? No. He hesitated and his voice was strange. I despise myself.
W. Somerset Maugham
