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A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
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
Difficulty
Story
Poor
Difficult
Stories
Reason
Despising
Thing
Invent
Good
Obviously
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.
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It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.
W. Somerset Maugham
In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.
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She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.” Waddington, smiling, translated the question. “She says I’m good.” “As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue,” Kitty mocked.
W. Somerset Maugham
It does the heart good to look at you.
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The day broke grey and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed.
W. Somerset Maugham
There was once a professor of law who said to his students. When you are fighting a case, if you have facts on your side hammer them into the jury, and if you have the law on your side hammer it into the judge. But if you have neither the facts nor the law, asked one of his listeners? Then hammer the hell into the table, answered the professor.
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A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.
W. Somerset Maugham
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
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All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
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Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.
W. Somerset Maugham
When she liked anyone it was quite natural for her to go to bed with him. She never thought twice about it. It was not vice it wasn't lasciviousness it was her nature. She gave herself as naturally as the sun gives heat or the flowers their perfume. It was a pleasure to her and she liked to give pleasure to others.
W. Somerset Maugham
A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self indulgence.
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
Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.
W. Somerset Maugham
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
W. Somerset Maugham
The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so.
W. Somerset Maugham
A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.
W. Somerset Maugham
No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.
W. Somerset Maugham
Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.
W. Somerset Maugham
