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W. Somerset Maugham quotes
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(60)
Français
(59)
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“Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the possibilities of life are shut off.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Moon and Sixpence
“It was one of the queer things of life that you saw a person every day for months and were so intimate with him that you could not imagine existence without him; then separation came, and everything went on in the same way, and the companion who...”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“'Why do nice women marry dull men?' 'Because intelligent men won't marry nice women.'”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Moon and Sixpence
“What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Painted Veil
“The faculty for myth is innate in the human race. It seizes with avidity upon any incidents, surprising or mysterious, in the career of those who have at all distinguished themselves from their fellows, and invents a legend to which it then...”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Moon and Sixpence
“It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with the one than happiness with the other.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Moon and Sixpence
“I do not speak of that greatness which is achieved by the fortunate politician or the successful soldier; that is a quality which belongs to the place he occupies rather than to the man; and a change of circumstances reduces it to very discreet...”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Moon and Sixpence
“the important thing was to love rather than to be loved”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“There are many foolish people in the world and when a man in a rather high position puts on no frills, slaps them on the back, and tells them he'll do anything in the world for them, they are very likely to think him clever.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Painted Veil
“do you find it more poetic when you don't quite know what it means? I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Moon and Sixpence
“One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Painted Veil
“The answer is meaningless unless you discover it for yourself.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“It was impossible that he did not love her still. Did you cease to love a person because you had been treated cruelly?”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Painted Veil
“if nobody spoke unless he had something to say . . . the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Painted Veil
“Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whisky and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Painted Veil
“It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Painted Veil
“He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even had a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“The bright hopes of youth had to be paid for at such a bitter price of disillusionment.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“We English have no very strong attachment to the soil, we can make ourselves at home in any part of the world, but the French, I think, have an attachment to their country which is almost a physical bond.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Painted Veil
“the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead....”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Painted Veil
“From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“Men seek but one thing in life—their pleasure.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“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
,
The Moon and Sixpence
“if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“He saw that nothing was good and nothing was evil; things were merely adapted to an end.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“There was neither good nor bad there. There were just facts. It was life.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“men are always the same. Fear makes them cruel…”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Moon and Sixpence
“When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Moon and Sixpence
“There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Moon and Sixpence
“It requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Moon and Sixpence
“What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve for”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Painted Veil
“Life was not so horrible if it was meaningless, and he faced it with a strange sense of power.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Moon and Sixpence
“Life is there to be lived rather than to be written about.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Painted Veil
“What d'you suppose I care if I'm a gentleman or not? If I were a gentleman I shouldn't waste my time with a vulgar slut like you.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
Of Human Bondage
“one cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Painted Veil
“let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life.”
W. Somerset Maugham
,
The Moon and Sixpence
view all 60 quotes
Related topics
love
art
women
life
men
happiness
conversation
meaning
talent
beauty
intelligence
good
suffering
action
money
youth
cruelty
suicide
need
praise
Related sources
Of Human Bondage
(34)
The Painted Veil
(12)
The Moon and Sixpence
(14)
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