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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (8,033)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,086)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,974)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,154)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,894)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,380)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,949)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,763)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,634)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,538)
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterfield (Lord) • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Recent Feedback
- 24-Feb-21 - "Mobs and Education," Speech, Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston (16 Dec 1860) | WIST on “The Boston Mob,” speech, Antislavery Meeting, Boston (21 Oct 1855).
- 22-Feb-21 - Letter (1860) | WIST on Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing (1644).
- 21-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Memoirs of William Miller, quoted in Life (2 May 1955).
- 21-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Letter, unsent (1927).
- 20-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Remark (Winter 1927).
- 13-Feb-21 - tweet: the case of anti-cytokine therapy for Covid-19 – Med-stat.info on “The Divine Afflatus,” New York Evening Mail (16 Nov 1917).
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- "Mobs and Education," Speech, Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston (16 Dec 1860) | WIST: Phillips,...
- Letter (1860) | WIST: Andrew, John A.
- "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST: Einstein, Albert
- "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST: Einstein, Albert
- "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST: Einstein, Albert
Quotations by Maugham, W. Somerset
Common sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncracies of individual character, and the opinion of the newspapers.
It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) English novelist and playwright [William Somerset Maugham]
(Attributed)
The earliest (uncited) attribution is from 1977. More discussion here.
What mean and cruel things men do for the love of God.
If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) English novelist and playwright [William Somerset Maugham]
A Writer’s Notebook (1949)
An entry in 1901. See Anatole France.
There are few minds in a century that can look upon a new idea without terror. Fortunately for the rest of us, there are very few new ideas about.
It’s no good trying to keep up old friendships. It’s painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) English novelist and playwright [William Somerset Maugham]
Cakes and Ale (1930)
(Source)
From the earliest times, the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
It’s asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic.
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) English novelist and playwright [William Somerset Maugham]
Of Human Bondage, ch. 39 (1915)
(Source)
It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.
It is a salutary discipline to consider the vast number of books that are written, the fair hopes with which their authors see them published, and the fate which awaits them. What chance is there that any book will make its way among that multitude? And the successful books are but the successes of a season. Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experiences he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours’ relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these books are well and carefully written; much thought has gone into their composition; to some even has been given the anxious labour of a lifetime. The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thoughts; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.
You cannot imagine the kindness I’ve received at the hands of perfect strangers.
It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.
A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
I have not been afraid of excess: excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
I wonder how anyone can have the face to condemn others when he reflects upon his own thoughts.
Suffering did not ennoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, mean, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things … it made them less than men.
Most people have a furious itch to talk about themselves and are restrained only by the disinclination of others to listen. Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result.
In youth, the years stretch before one so long that it is hard to realize that they will ever pass, and even in middle age, with the ordinary expectation of life in these days, it is easy to find excuses for delaying what one would like to do but does not want to; but at last a time comes when death must be considered.
An occasional glance at the obituary column of The Times has suggested to me that the sixties are very unhealthy; I have long thought that it would exasperate me to die before I had written this book, and so it seemed to me that I had better set about it at once. When I have finished it I can face the future with serenity, for I shall have rounded off my life’s work.
Now that I have grown old, I realize that for most of us it is not enough to have achieved personal success. One’s best friend must also have failed.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) English novelist and playwright [William Somerset Maugham]
Comment (1959)
On his 85th birthday. Quoted in Richard Cordell, Somerset Maugham: A Biographical and Critical Study (1961). Cordell mentions the influence of La Rochefoucauld, and the quote is often attributed to him though it is not in his Maxims. Also attributed to Gore Vidal, Iris Murdoch, Genghis Khan. (More info here.)
Pithier (and more common) paraphrases:
- "It is not enough to succeed; one’s best friend must fail."
- "It is not enough to succeed; one’s friends must fail."
- "It is not enough to succeed; others must fail."
- "It’s not enough that I should succeed, others should fail."
- "It is not sufficient that I succeed –- all others must fail."