# A Writer's Notebook

- Author: [William Somerset Maugham](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-somerset-maugham.md)
- Quotes: 17
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-somerset-maugham/a-writers-notebook

## Quotes

> She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.

p. 189

> There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species.

p. 38

> In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.

p. 48

> It was not till quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say: "I don't know."

p. 258

> Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother.

p. 28

> Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.

p. 1

> Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.

p. 196

> What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.

p. 67

> Sentimentality is only sentiment that rubs you up the wrong way.

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

p. 17

> The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.

p. 13

> 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.

p. 76

> Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

p. 20

> There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.

p. 66

> I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.

p. 336

> The more intelligent a man is the more capable is he of suffering.

p. 19

> At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.