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Only mediocrity is always in shape.
People may forgive you for the good you have done for them, but they rarely forget the evil they have done to you.
A God who can be understood is no longer God.
Knowing the past is unpleasant enough; knowing the future would be simply unbearable.
No dictator has a clear, logical mind. The dictator has an inner impulse, strength, magnetism, charm, but if you take a closer look at his words, you will see that his mind is ordinary. He may act because he is driven by instinct, but if he thinks about it, he will immediately become confused.
A dictator must have some mystical attraction that causes his followers to fall into a kind of religious rapture. He must have a certain magnetism so that they would consider it an honor to give their lives for him. They should feel that in his service their lives gain greatness.
He was just a good-natured, boring, honest, ordinary guy. Some of his qualities may have deserved praise, but it was impossible to strive to communicate with him. It was equal to zero.
It is not true that suffering ennobles character; sometimes happiness succeeds, but suffering in most cases makes a person petty and vindictive.
It is better to suffer evil than to cause evil.
She always knew how to quote, which was a good substitute for her own wit.
The norm is something that occurs only occasionally.
For one who is interested in the human soul, there is no more exciting activity than the search for motives that result in certain actions.
One consolation is that maybe I didn’t look as foolish as I felt.
A person reveals himself in his works. In social interactions, he shows himself as he wants to appear, and you can correctly judge him only by his small and unconscious actions and his involuntarily changing facial expression.
Great truths are too important to be new.
...for a person accustomed to reading, it becomes a drug, and he himself becomes its slave. Try to take his books away from him, and he will become gloomy, twitchy and restless, and then, like an alcoholic who, if left without alcohol, attacks the shelves.
From Mrs. Strickland's present appearance one might assume that she had been very pretty in her youth, which in fact she had never been.
...civilized people are incredibly inventive in their ways of spending their short lives in boring ceremonies. It was one of those dinners when you can’t help but wonder why the hostess bothers herself with receiving guests and why the guests took the trouble to come to her. There were ten people at the table. They met indifferently and had to part ways with a sigh of relief.
A woman will always sacrifice herself if given the right opportunity. This is her favorite way to please herself.
How bitter it is to look at a woman whom you once loved with all your heart, with all your soul - loved so much that you could not be without her for a minute - and realize that you would not be at all upset if you never saw her again. The tragedy of love is indifference.
Tolerance is another name for indifference.
When a man reaches the age at which he can no longer serve as an official, gardener or policeman, it is believed that he is just ripe to decide the destinies of his country.
...Everything is determined by what you are looking for in life, and also by what you ask of yourself and others.
Writing simply and clearly is as difficult as being sincere and kind.
To develop character, it is necessary to make a heroic effort at least twice a day. This is exactly what I do: I get up every morning and go to bed every night.
A person is not what he wants to be, but what he cannot help being.
Each of us is alone in this world. Each is imprisoned in a copper tower and can communicate with his fellows only through signs. But the signs are not the same for everyone, and therefore their meaning is dark and incorrect. We desperately strive to share the treasures of our hearts with others, but they do not know how to accept them, and so we wander alone through life, side by side with our companions, but not at one with them, not understanding them and not being understood by them. We are like people who live in a foreign country, almost not knowing its language; they want to express many beautiful, deep thoughts, but they are doomed to utter only cliched phrases from a phrasebook. Ideas are wandering through their brains, one more interesting than the other, and these people can only say: “Our gardener’s aunt forgot her umbrella at home.”
Unfortunately, it is not always possible to do what you think is right without causing pain to others.
William Maugham was born on January 25, 1874 in Paris. His father was co-owner of a law firm there and legal attaché at the British Embassy. His mother, a famous beauty, ran a salon that attracted many celebrities from the world of art and politics. At the age of ten, the boy was orphaned and he was sent to England, to his uncle, a priest.
Eighteen-year-old Maugham spent a year in Germany, and a few months after his return he entered the medical school at St. Thomas. In 1897 he received a diploma in general medicine and surgery, but never practiced medicine: while still a student, he published his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), which absorbed impressions from his student practice in this area of the London slums. The book was well received, and Maugham decided to become a writer. For ten years his success as a prose writer was very modest, but after 1908 he began to gain fame: his four plays - Jack Straw (1908), Smith (Smith, 1909), Landed Gentry (1910), Loaves of Fish (Loaves and Fishes, 1911) - were staged in London and then in New York.
Since the beginning of the First World War, Maugham served in the sanitary unit. Later he was transferred to the intelligence service, he visited France, Italy, Russia, as well as America and the islands of the South Pacific. The work of a secret agent was vividly reflected in his collection of short stories, Ashenden, or the British Agent (1928). After the war, Maugham continued to travel widely. Maugham died in Nice (France) on December 16, 1965.
A prolific writer, Somerset Maugham wrote 25 plays, 21 novels and more than 100 short stories, but he was not an innovator in any literary genre. His famous comedies, such as The Circle (1921), The Constant Wife (1927), do not deviate from the canons of the English “well-made play.” In fictional prose, be it large or small form, he sought to present the plot and strongly disapproved of the sociological or any other orientation of the novel. Maugham's best novels are the largely autobiographical Of Human Bondage and Cakes and Ale (1930); exotic The Moon and Sixpence (1919), inspired by the fate of the French artist P. Gauguin; the story of the southern seas The Narrow Corner, 1932; The Razor's Edge, 1944. After 1948, Maugham left drama and fiction, writing essays, mainly on literary topics. The rapid intrigue, brilliant style and masterful composition of the story earned him the fame of the “English Maupassant”.
Sayings, aphorisms and quotes by S. Maugham
William Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) - an outstanding British writer and playwright, successful prose writer of the 1930s, author of 78 books, British intelligence agent. On assignment from MI5, he was in Russia in 1917 and met with Kerensky and Savinkov.
Maugham wrote his debut novel, Lisa of Lambeth, in 1897, and published his first collection of short stories in 1899. In total, he is the author of 78 books, the most famous of which are “Theater”, “The Moon and a Penny” and “The Burden of Human Passions”.
40 quotes from William Somerset Maugham about women, love and life:
- Love is not always blind, and perhaps there is nothing more painful than loving a person with all your heart, realizing that he is unworthy of love.
- The world consists of me, my thoughts, my feelings; everything else is a mirage, pure imagination.
- Nowhere do I feel more alone than in a crowd of wild joy or equally wild grief.
- Life is ten percent what you do in it, and ninety percent how you receive it.
- A person is not what he wants to be, but what he cannot help being.
- Good and evil are relative concepts, and people simply adapt them to their own ends.
- Tolerance is another name for indifference.
- Love dies. The greatest tragedy of life is not that people die, but that they stop loving.
- Wisdom is to take the good from people and be patient with the bad.
- There are only two things in the world that justify human existence - love and art.
- A woman attracts men to her by playing on her charm, and keeps them near her by playing on their vices.
- A woman will always sacrifice herself if given the right opportunity. This is her favorite way to please herself.
- Pessimism is largely caused by the fact that we attribute to others the feelings that we ourselves would experience in their place.
- It is better to suffer evil than to cause evil.
- The worst thing in the world is when people who are not given talent stubbornly want to do art.
- Unfortunately, it is not always possible to do what you think is right without causing pain to others.
- There is no worse torture in the world than to love and despise at the same time.
- The writer is called upon to know rather than to judge.
- They say that women always remember their first lover with tenderness, but do they always manage to remember who was the first?
- The word “love” means two different things: simply love, that is, passion, and mercy.
- In a revolution, the foam of society, scoundrels and criminals rise to the surface.
- It is not true that suffering ennobles character; sometimes happiness succeeds, but suffering in most cases makes a person petty and vindictive.
- There's one downside to perfection: it can get boring.
- A woman will always sacrifice herself if given the right opportunity. This is her favorite way to please herself.
- Tolerance is another name for indifference.
- A person is not what he wants to be, but what he cannot help being.
- Unfortunately, it is not always possible to do what you think is right without causing pain to others.
- Life is too short to do for yourself what others can do for you for money.
- Alas, in our imperfect world it is much easier to get rid of good habits than bad ones.
- The main disadvantage of women is the passion to discuss their personal affairs with anyone who agrees to listen.
- One consolation is that maybe I didn’t look as foolish as I felt.
- There is no worse torture in the world than to love and despise at the same time.
- A woman attracts men to her by playing on her charm, and keeps them near her by playing on their vices.
- Only a man who respects a woman can break up with her without humiliating her.
- The bitterness of life is not that we are mortal, but that love dies.
- One funny thing about life is that if you reject everything but the best, you very often get it.
- Still, it is better to know that you are a fool than to be a fool and not know it.
- And yet love is not worth all the fuss that is made around it.
- Love is what happens to men and women who do not know each other.
- And women can keep secrets. But they cannot keep silent about the fact that they kept silent about the secret.
On the website page “Quotations and Aphorisms of William Somerset Maugham” you can read the statements of the English classic about women, about love, about life.
Some of Maugham’s aphorisms are very well known to a wide range of readers and you will undoubtedly recognize them, and some you will be able to familiarize yourself with for the first time.
After all, it is better to know that you are a fool than to be a fool and not know it. ("Theater")
By sacrificing himself, a person becomes higher than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? At best, he can sacrifice his only son ("The Razor's Edge")
Men are slaves of habits, this helps women keep them (“Theater”)
People don't need a reason to do what they want. They need an excuse ("Theater")
Only a woman knows what another woman is capable of. ("Theater")
are terrible, not the roles. ("Theater")
She loved him now in a completely different way - after all, he made her suffer. (“The Burden of Human Passions”)
- Why do nice women so often marry boring men?
-Because smart men don't marry nice women. ("The Moon and the Penny")
Knowing the past is quite unpleasant; knowing the future would be simply unbearable.
Nothing awakens memories like smell. ("Theater")
The better people think of you, the more you must live up to the image they have in mind. ("Villa on the Hill")
When a person is not around, you idealize him, at a distance the feeling intensifies, this is true, but when you see him again, you are surprised at what you saw in him. ("Christmas Holidays")
Nothing remains without consequences. Throw a stone into a pond and you have already changed the universe a little. ("Razor blade")
It's easy to be nice to those you don't care about. (“The Burden of Human Passions”)
A person learns much more from the mistakes he makes of his own free will than from the right actions done at the direction of someone else. (“The Burden of Human Passions”)
Only a woman knows what another woman is capable of. ("Theater")
When you start thinking about the past, it means you no longer have a future. ("Theater")
A woman attracts men to her by playing on her charm, and keeps them near her by playing on their vices. ("Theater")
Wisdom is to take the good from people and be tolerant of the bad (“The Burden of Human Passions”)
The main drawback of women is the passion to discuss their personal affairs with everyone who agrees to listen. ("The Moon and the Penny")
People love to make fun of things they don't understand. ("Mage")
A person can do as he pleases if he agrees to be responsible for it. (“The Burden of Human Passions”)
Great truths are too important to be new. ("Summing Up")
A person is not what he wants to be, but what he cannot help being.
Our weaknesses, and not our strengths, make us dear to our loved ones (“Theater”)
“ I had no idea that you are such a wonderful woman!”
-If you had asked me, I would have told you. ("Theater")
And sometimes a step towards another is the greatest journey in life (“The Painted Veil”)
in the world than to steadfastly endure the adversity of others (“Something Human”)
People are always offended if you don’t recognize them; they are very significant in their own eyes, and they are unpleasantly surprised by the discovery that to others they mean very little (“Something Human”)
Let others despise me. But I will never commit an act for which I will despise myself (“Invictus”)
