Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Story
Poor
Difficult
Stories
Reason
Despising
Thing
Invent
Good
Obviously
Difficulty
More quotes by 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
I am sick of this way of life. The weariness and sadness of old age make it intolerable. I have walked with death in hand, and death's own hand is warmer than my own. I don't wish to live any longer.
W. Somerset Maugham
if you'd ever had a grown-up daughter you'd know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her - well, it's much better to pretend you're the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.
W. Somerset Maugham
She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.
W. Somerset Maugham
Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.
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
It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
W. Somerset Maugham
Imagination grows by exercise.
W. Somerset Maugham
Great writers create writers of smaller gifts copy
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
I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to the universities go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene ... They are scum.
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
Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.
W. Somerset Maugham
Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
W. Somerset Maugham
Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.
W. Somerset Maugham
A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
W. Somerset Maugham
The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.
W. Somerset Maugham
You must not pursue a success, but fly from it.
W. Somerset Maugham
There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.
W. Somerset Maugham
