W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham CHwas a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest paid author during the 1930s...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth25 January 1874
power land business-success
Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.
baby long eras
We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.
government may needs
It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.
humor eye saint
The humorist has a good eye for the humbug; he does not always recognize the saint.
giving missing fiction
Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.
principles useful-things expediency
The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
art humility men
Art, if it is to be reckoned as one of the great values of life, must teach man humility, tolerance, wisdom and magnanimity. The value of art is not beauty, but right action.
religious common-sense common
I don't know why it is that the religious never ascribe common sense to God.
writing ideas brain
The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.
heart men cynical
No man in his heart is quite so cynical as a well-bred woman.
art action morality
Art, unless it leads to right action, is no more than the opium of an intelligentsia.
character yield harmony
It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.
writing judging concerned
The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.
jobs writing feels
Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it.