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W. Somerset Maugham Quotes - Page 13

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By the time a man notices that he is no longer young, his youth has long since left him.

By the time a man notices that he is no longer young, his youth has long since left him.

W. Somerset Maugham
Love, Men, Long

It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.

W. Somerset Maugham
Philosophy, Believe, Reason

If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn't be as overpopulated as it is now.

W. Somerset Maugham
Wisdom, People, Intelligence

No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention.

W. Somerset Maugham
Action, Conventions

They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection; but perhaps she does not always remember him.

W. Somerset Maugham
Doe, Firsts, Lovers
W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.134, Courier Corporation

When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.

W. Somerset Maugham
Love, Age, Aging
The Circle

Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.

W. Somerset Maugham
Life, Nature, Common Sense
W. Somerset Maugham (2008). “The Razor's Edge”, p.186, Random House

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

W. Somerset Maugham
Copies, Great Writers

I'm not only my spirit buy my body, and who can decide how much I, my individual self, am conditioned by the accident of my body? Would Byron have been Byron but for his club foot, or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky without his epilepsy?

W. Somerset Maugham
Self, Epilepsy, Feet

Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part.

W. Somerset Maugham
Want, Ridiculous, Given
W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.108, Courier Corporation

Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.

W. Somerset Maugham
Character, Names, Common Sense

A woman may be as wicked as she likes, but if she isn't pretty it won't do her much good.

W. Somerset Maugham
Women, Good Woman, Wicked
W. Somerset Maugham (2011). “A Writer's Notebook”, p.26, Random House

When some incident has shattered the career you’ve mapped out for yourself, a folly, a crime or a misfortune, you mustn’t think you’re down and out. It may be a stroke of luck, and when you look back years later you may say to yourself that you wouldn’t for anything in the world exchange the new life disaster has forced upon you for the dull, humdrum existence you would have led if circumstances hadn’t intervened.

W. Somerset Maugham
Thinking, Years, Careers

No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point; but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess.

W. Somerset Maugham
Writing, Character, Giving

I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.

W. Somerset Maugham
Regret, Hands, Soul

The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.

W. Somerset Maugham
Writing, Cutting, Play
W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull.

W. Somerset Maugham
Book, Reading, People
W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

W. Somerset Maugham
Writing, Young Writers, Trouble

Culture is not just an ornament; it is the expression of a nation's character, and at the same time it is a powerful instrument to mould character. The end of culture is right living.

W. Somerset Maugham
Life, Powerful, Character

I wonder how anyone can have the face to condemn others when he reflects upon his own thoughts.

W. Somerset Maugham
Faces, Wonder, Wit
W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.

W. Somerset Maugham
Gestures, Heroic, Easy
W. Somerset Maugham (2013). “The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection”, p.1809, eBookIt.com

On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it, so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment.

W. Somerset Maugham
Stars, Men, Space

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

W. Somerset Maugham
Writing, Judging, Concerned
W. Somerset Maugham (2014). “The Great Novels and Short Stories of Somerset Maugham: One of the Finest Writers of Short Stories Who Ever Lived”, p.328, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.

W. Somerset Maugham
Common Sense, Novelists, Belief

The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost of unending effort but, with all the forces of gravity against it, a fleeting poise in mid-air, a lovely attitude worthy to be made immortal in a bas-relief, it was lost as soon as it was gained and there remained no more than the memory of an exquisite emotion. So life, lived variously and largely, becomes a work of art only when brought to its beautiful conclusion and is reduced to nothingness in the moment when it arrives at perfection.

W. Somerset Maugham
Beautiful, Dance, Art

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