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A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.
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
Contributes
Welfare
Ought
Community
Work
Men
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.
W. Somerset Maugham
He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.
W. Somerset Maugham
The audience is a very curious animal. It is shrewd rather than intelligent. Its mental capacity is less than that of its most intellectual members.
W. Somerset Maugham
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
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
The first duty of a woman is to be pretty, the second is to be well-groomed, and the third is never to contradict.
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
There's nothing the world loves more than a ready-made description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.
W. Somerset Maugham
Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion.
W. Somerset Maugham
What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
W. Somerset Maugham
The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.
W. Somerset Maugham
No married man's ever made up his mind until he's heard what his wife has got to say about it.
W. Somerset Maugham
The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.
W. Somerset Maugham
Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.
W. Somerset Maugham
Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.
W. Somerset Maugham
The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
W. Somerset Maugham
It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
W. Somerset Maugham
No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.
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
With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself.
W. Somerset Maugham
