Frases de William Somerset Maugham

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“No hay ninguna mujer que valga nada para el hombre, a menos que el hombre esté enamorado de ella; en este caso, vale todo lo que cuesta.”

“La gente te pide críticas, pero en realidad sólo quiere halagos.”

“Tres clases hay de ignorantes: no saber lo que debiera saberse, saber mal lo que se sabe, y saber lo que no debiera saberse.”

“En su lucha contra el individuo, la sociedad tiene tres armas : ley, opinión publica y conciencia.”

“En tiempos de hipocresía, cualquier sinceridad parece cinismo”

“Si el amor y el deber se encuentran, empieza el estado de gracia y se llega a una felicidad que es muy difícil imaginar.”

“Solo el amor y el arte hacen tolerable la existencia.”

“Uno, con la edad, se libra del deseo de hacer las cosas como los demás y hace tranquilamente y sin miedo lo que le parece a él.”

“La vejez tiene sus placeres, los cuales, aunque diferentes, no son menos que los placeres de la juventud.”

“La mayoría de las personas abandonan sus vicios sólo cuando les causan molestias.”

“Acuérdate de esto: cumplir el deber no tiene más mérito que lavarse la cara. No basta cumplirlo, pues el deber se impone. La única cosa que vale es amarlo.”

“Cada hombre tiene secretos que él mismo ignora.”

“Cuando sólo se piensa en el pasado, es que no se tiene futuro”

“El dinero es como un sexto sentido; sin él no podríamos usar completamente los otros cinco.”

“El dolor une, a veces, pero no enseña a vivir.”

“En ocasiones el exceso es estimulante. Evita que con la moderación se adquiera el mortal efecto de un hábito.”

“La gente no busca razones para hacer lo que quiere hacer, busca excusas.”

“La sensación de la distancia depende menos del espacio que del tiempo.”

“La vida es demasiado corta para hacer tú mismo lo que puedes mandar hacer a otros, pagándoles.”

“Los proverbios y las máximas son el último refugio de los desamparados.”

“Los tres deberes fundamentales de la mujer son ser bonita, ir bien vestida y no contradecir.”

“Ningún dolor nos parece justo y las injusticias siempre disponen mal.”

“Para comer bien en Inglaterra es recomendable desayunar tres veces.”

“Para rezar a Dios con devoción no hace falta creer en Dios según los dogmas de ninguna religión.”

“Si la gente sólo hablara cuando tuviera algo que decir, el ser humano perdería muy pronto el uso del lenguaje.”

“Si no quieres que te mientan, no preguntes.”

“Si otro nos critica y no nos ofendemos, el criticón se desorienta.”

“Solo avanzada ya mi vida me di cuenta de cuán fácil es decir: no lo sé.”

“Sólo una persona mediocre está siempre en su mejor momento.”

“Un filósofo es un tipo que sube a una cumbre en busca del Sol; encuentra niebla, desciende y explica el magnífico espectáculo que ha visto.”

“Para qué fatigarse buscando soluciones, cuando la certeza de encontrarlas es ya un placer delicioso.”

“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.”

“…we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.”

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

“The sad Don Quixote of a worthless purpose.”

“You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.”

“But who can fathom the subtleties of the human heart? Certainly not those who expect from it only decorous sentiments and normal emotions.”

“It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.”

“She had a very agreeable smile; it did not light up her face suddenly, but seemed rather to suffuse it by degrees with charm. It hesitated for a moment about her lips and then slowly travelled to those great shining eyes of hers and there softly lingered.”

“Passion doesn't count the cost. … Passion is destructive.”

“He loved her so passionately he wanted her to be one soul and one body with him; and he was conscious that here, with those deep roots attaching her to the native life, she would always keep something from him.”

“I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

“I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul’s good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.”

“The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.”

“No gray hairs streak my soul, no grandfatherly fondness there! I shake the world with the might of my voice, and walk—handsome, twentytwoyearold.”

“I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. … They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.”

“I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.”

“The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.”

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

“It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.”

“What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably… have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.”

“Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.”

“Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.”

“The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.”

“The crown of literature is poetry.”

“The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.”

“By the time I was twenty-four I had constructed a complete system of philosophy. It rested on two principles: The Relativity of Things and The Circumferentiality of Man. I have since discovered that the first was not a very original discovery. It may be that the other was profound, but though I have racked my brains I cannot for the life of me remember what it was.”

“…the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.”

“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.”

“I reflected, while I chatted with the woman I had been asked to ‘take in’, that civilized man practises a strange ingenuity in wasting on tedious exercises the brief span of his life.”