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

— 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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit…" by W. Somerset Maugham?

W. Somerset Maugham photo

W. Somerset Maugham 158

British playwright, novelist, short story writer 1874–1965

Related quotes

“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Vulgarity is no substitute for wit”

Julian Fellowes (1949) English actor, dramatist, director, novelist, producer and screenwriter

“A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.”

Joseph Roux (1834–1905) French poet

Part 1, LXXIV
Meditations of a Parish Priest (1866)

“Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Source: Table Talk (1782), Line 542.

“To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Robertson Davies Dangerous Jewels (1960).

“Mary Poppins herself had flown away, but the gifts she had brought would remain for always..”

P. L. Travers book Mary Poppins Opens the Door

Source: Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943), Ch. 8 "The Other Door"

“A woman is, occasionally, quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation. It takes an abundance of imagination, to be sure.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

“She had been restless and forceful, a killer of the border hills, yet she had a childlike faith in love. She had given herself to him and never doubted the wisdom of the gift as he had sometimes doubted it. She had kept the faith, and she was dead.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Major Richard Sharpe (describing his murdered wife, Teresa Moreno) p. 339
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Enemy (1984)

“She had an unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.”

Henry James book Greville Fane

"Greville Fane" http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/gfane10.txt, from The Real Thing: and Other Tales (1893).

“Life, which has gifted us with so much valuable and beautiful, so much created and possible, is unquestionably deserving of reverence and service.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Related topics