“The most difficult thing for a wise woman to do is to pretend to be a foolish one.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from Mrs Craddock
“Happily men don't realise how stupid they are, or half the world would commit suicide. Knowledge is a will-of-the-wisp, fluttering ever out of the traveller's reach; and a weary journey must be endured before it is even seen. It is only when a man knows a good deal that he discovers how unfathomable is his ignorance. The man who knows nothing is satisfied that there is nothing to know, consequently that he knows everything; and you may more easily persuade him that the moon is made of green cheese than that he is not omniscient.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from Mrs Craddock
“Marriage is always a hopeless idiocy for a woman who has enough of her own to live upon.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from Mrs Craddock
“With old and young great sorrow is followed by a sleepless night, and with the old great joy is as disturbing; but you, I suppose, finds happiness more natural and its rest is not disturbed by it.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from Mrs Craddock
“I myself stand on one side and the rest of the world on the other. There is an abyss between, that no power can cross, a strange barrier more insuperable than a mountain of fire. Husband and wife know nothing of one another. However ardent their passion, however intimate their union, they are never one; they are scarcely more to one another than strangers.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from Mrs Craddock
“There is nothing so difficult as to persuade men that they are ignorant. Bertha, exaggerating the seriousness of the affair, thought it charlatanry to undertake a post without knowledge and without capacity. Fortunately that is not the opinion of the majority, or the government of this enlightened country could not proceed.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from Mrs Craddock
“In the midst of life we are in death --one can never tell what may happen.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from Mrs Craddock
W. Somerset Maugham
Born place: in Paris, France
Born date January 25, 1874
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“What I'm trying to explain to my sulky little cousin is that we are doing things backwards. We are going from the end of the river to the start of the river. And endings are always sad. We are doing the sad bit first, which is wrong. Strange.”
― Mal Peet, quote from Tamar
“With our cynicism, created by years of insecurity, how did we look on men? We judged the salesmen in the van der Weyden by the companies they represented, their ability to offer us concessions. Knowing such men, having access to the services they offered, and being flattered by them that we were not ordinary customers paying the full price or having to take our place in the queue, we thought we had mastered the world.”
― V.S. Naipaul, quote from A Bend in the River
“Um, hello?" I raised a hand. "Not a traitor, and the Queen told us where to find you. Or do you think that we're such major badasses that we fought our way through the knowe to come and loiter at you in an imposing fashion? Because I've got to say I'm flattered.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from One Salt Sea
“And what good was a political strategist who couldn't look ahead to his own death? Without that he would have been merely another Hitler, who didn't want his country to survive him.”
― Philip K. Dick, quote from Now Wait for Last Year
“Primitive communism, chattel slavery, serf slavery, and wage slavery were necessary stepping-stones in the evolution of society.”
― Jack London, quote from The Iron Heel
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The Kings of ClonmelBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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