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William Somerset Maugham (1874 – 1965)


English playwright, novelist, and short story writer; often published as simply W Somerset Maugham.
William Somerset Maugham
If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.
Maugham quotes
Of course it was cause and effect, but in the necessity with which follows the other lay all tragedy of life.
Maugham
Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.




I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.
Maugham William Somerset
No gray hairs streak my soul, no grandfatherly fondness there! I shake the world with the might of my voice, and walk—handsome, twentytwoyearold.
[Money] is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.
William Somerset Maugham
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.
I have been forced to conclude from this that we know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
Maugham
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
Maugham William Somerset
It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise…
William Somerset Maugham
It was such a lovely day I thought it was a pity to get up.




It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.
William 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.
Maugham quotes
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
Maugham William Somerset
D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.
I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
William Somerset Maugham
I thought I should be a fool to allow work to interfere with a delight in the passing moment that I might never enjoy again so fully.
I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world.
William Somerset Maugham
The tragedy of love is indifference.
Maugham William Somerset
I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.


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