Truth Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

23 Truth quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

All Truth quotes W. Somerset Maugham’s page

Maugham’s 23 statements cut to the bone with a novelist’s eye for human folly. His clear, sometimes cynical tone provides a realistic look at how truth plays out in personal and social dramas.

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The drama is make-believe. It does not deal with truth but with effect.

W. Somerset Maugham

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Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

W. Somerset Maugham

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“Doña Beatriz was too proud to lie.”

W. Somerset Maugham

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If truth is a value it is because it is true and not because it is brave to speak it.

W. Somerset Maugham

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Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.

W. Somerset Maugham

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You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.

W. Somerset Maugham

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I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of…

W. Somerset Maugham

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The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.

W. Somerset Maugham

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“Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams. W. Somerset Maugham”

W. Somerset Maugham

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If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

W. Somerset Maugham

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If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.

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“It looked as though you did not act in a certain way because you thought in a certain way, but rather you…

W. Somerset Maugham

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In religion above all things the only thing of use is an objective truth. The only God that is of use is…

W. Somerset Maugham

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I am afraid of people with too much charm. They devour you. In the end you are made a sacrifice to the…

W. Somerset Maugham

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You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no…

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“I don’t see why the things we believe absolutely now shouldn’t be just as wrong as what they believed in the past.’…

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No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh,…

W. Somerset Maugham

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Our wise old church...has discovered that if you will act as if you believed belief will be given to you; if you…

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“I haven't deeply considered the matter [...] but if to look truth in the face and not resent it when it's unpalatable,…

W. Somerset Maugham

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“C.-C.: My dear Arnold, we all hope that you have before you a distinguished political career. You can't learn too soon that…

W. Somerset Maugham

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“You don't know the difference between truth and make-believe. You never stop acting. It's second nature to you. You act when there's…

W. Somerset Maugham

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“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are…

W. Somerset Maugham

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“What do you value in life then?" "I'm afraid you'll laugh at me. Beauty, truth, and goodness.”

W. Somerset Maugham

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More by W. Somerset Maugham

“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

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“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

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Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.

W. Somerset Maugham

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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

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“There is no more merit in having read a thousand books than in having ploughed a thousand fields.”

W. Somerset Maugham

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“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

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In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.

W. Somerset Maugham

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Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.

W. Somerset Maugham

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“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

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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

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If only the good were a little less heavy-footed

W. Somerset Maugham

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Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.

W. Somerset Maugham

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