We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
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Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Explore 33 verified and sourced quotes attributed to W. Somerset Maugham. Open any quote for its dedicated page, source details and related topics.
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Selected quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
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.
Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
Tolerance is another word for indifference.
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
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.
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.
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