William Somerset Maugham citations (158 citations, Page 2)

William Somerset Maugham: 158 citations 0 J'aime

William Somerset Maugham: Citations en anglais

“There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain.”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), Ch. 5, p. 12 http://books.google.com/books?id=2hNbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22There+is+only+one+thing+about+which+I+am+certain+and+this+is%22&pg=PA12#v=onepage- 13 http://books.google.com/books?id=2hNbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22that+there+is+very+little+about+which+one+can+be+certain%22&pg=PA13#v=onepage

“He was the kind of man with whom one would have hesitated to pass a lonely evening, but with whom one might cheerfully have looked forward to spending six months.”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge (1943)

“Religion is…a conspiracy of…priests to gain control over the people…”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge (1943)

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

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W. Somerset Maugham

"1896", p. 20
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

“You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

The Bread-Winner (1930)
Plays

“The Riviera isn't only a sunny place for shady people.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

Strictly Personal, p. 156 (Doubleday, Doran and co., inc., 1941)

“In art honesty is not only the best but the only policy.”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Razor's Edge

p, 125
The Razor's Edge (1943)

“The poignancy which all beauty has.”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 23, p. 87

“There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Summing Up

Ch. 4, p. 11 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ma3RAAAAMAAJ&q=%22There+is+a+sort+of+man+who+pays+no+attention+to+his+good+actions+but+is+tormented+by+his+bad+ones+this+is+the+type+that+most+often+writes+about+himself%22&pg=PA11#v=onepage
The Summing Up (1938)

“Almost all the people who have had most effect on me I seem to have met by chance.”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge (1943)

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

Source: A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 48

“I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man nothing but instant flight could save him.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

"The escape", p. 309
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

“Things don't get any easier by putting them off.”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge (1943)

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

Points of View (1959) Ch. 1

“I held my breath, for to me there is nothing more awe-inspiring than when a man discovers to you the nakedness of his soul.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

"The pool", p. 140
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

“Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 66

“It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 17, p. 64

“I had not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know how much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in the noble, or how much goodness in the reprobate.”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 11, p. 39

“We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.”

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W. Somerset Maugham The Constant Wife

The Constant Wife (1927)
Plays

“Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

The Trembling of a Leaf (1921), ch. 3

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge (1943)

“It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise…”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 223

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

"1901", p. 66
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

“She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit…”

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W. Somerset Maugham

[1926, August, The Creative Impulse, Harper's Bazar, 41, 0017-7873, Hearst Corp., New York]
Revised with quotation in the 1931 compilation Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular.
Often misattributed to George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde
Short Stories

“Impropriety is the soul of wit.”

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W. Somerset Maugham livre The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 4, p. 17

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

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W. Somerset Maugham The Circle

The Circle
Plays

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

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W. Somerset Maugham

Source: A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 38. Maugham says something similar in The Summing up, Ch 22: "Love was only the dirty trick nature played on us to achieve the continuation of the species"