It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
I happen to think we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for nothing but money. We are nothing… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Refecting on the high divorce rate in America as contrasted with England "American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“A man thinks it quite natural that he should fall out of love with a woman, but it never strikes him for a moment… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, but in his book… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“There is no more merit in having read a thousand books than in having ploughed a thousand fields.” — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“I wanted to live again and again. I was willing to accept every sort of life, no matter what its pain and sorrow; I… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“His love became a prison from which he longed to escape, but he had not the strength merely to open the door-that was all… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
I did not believe him capable of love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
