"He was the kind of man with whom one would have hesitated to pass a lonely evening, but with whom one might cheerfully have looked forward to spending six months."

W. Somerset Maugham Literature See all quotes by W. Somerset Maugham →

React to this quote

More by W. Somerset Maugham

“After all, a man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.”

“I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.”

“Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.”

“You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.”

“The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.”

“The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes...”

Resonant Thoughts

"Historical evolution mocks all the prophylactic measures that have been adopted for the prevention of oligarchy. If laws are passed to control the dominion of the leaders, it is the laws which gradual…"

— Robert Michels

Politics1876–1936

#power

"I don't have to begin, as I would have if I were speaking for the Church, with any apologies. We don't have a lot to apologize for. It wasn't we who framed Galileo, it wasn't we who said that God want…"

— Christopher Hitchens

Philosophy1949–2011

#Human Nature

"The philosophy of this book I owe to the philosophy of Goethe, which is practically unknown to-day, and also to that of Nietzsche. The position of Goethe in West-European metaphysics is still not unde…"

— Oswald Spengler

Mathematics1880–1936

#philosophy