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Quotes from A Writer's Notebook — W. Somerset Maugham

1874–1965 England

← All quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

18 quotes

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

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.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

The more intelligent a man is the more capable is he of suffering.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.

A Writer's Notebook (1949)

Sentimentality is only sentiment that rubs you up the wrong way.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

It was not till quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say: "I don't know."

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.

A Writer's Notebook (1946)

Attribution

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