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Quotes from The Summing Up — W. Somerset Maugham

1874–1965 England

← All quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

25 quotes

...the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.

The Summing Up (1938)

... habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

The Summing Up (1938)

...we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.

The Summing Up (1938)

The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

The Summing Up (1938)

I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.

The Summing Up (1938)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: W. Somerset Maugham (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.