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A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.
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
Common
Childlike
Sense
Novelist
Preserve
Must
Preserves
Great
Novelists
Things
Consequence
Importance
Belief
Considers
More quotes by 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
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
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Do you like card tricks? No, I hate card tricks, I answered. Well, I`ll just show you this one. He showed me three.
W. Somerset Maugham
Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.
W. Somerset Maugham
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
W. Somerset Maugham
Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.
W. Somerset Maugham
The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes...
W. Somerset Maugham
There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
W. Somerset Maugham
Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.
W. Somerset Maugham
But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you it may have other and much more profound meanings for the critic, but at second-hand they can be of small service to you.
W. Somerset Maugham
The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.
W. Somerset Maugham
I wonder how anyone can have the face to condemn others when he reflects upon his own thoughts.
W. Somerset Maugham
Women's hearts are like old china, none the worse for a break or two.
W. Somerset Maugham
When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.
W. Somerset Maugham
Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
W. Somerset Maugham
Life isn't long enough for love and art.
W. Somerset Maugham
Illusions are like umbrellas - you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound.
W. Somerset Maugham
As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.
W. Somerset Maugham
Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
W. Somerset Maugham
