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William Somerset Maugham Zitate
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William Somerset Maugham [ˈsʌməsɪt mɔːm] , auch bekannt als W. Somerset Maugham, war ein englischer Erzähler und Dramatiker. Er zählt zu den meistgelesenen englischsprachigen Autoren des 20. Jahrhunderts.

William Somerset Maugham errang mit seinem 1897 veröffentlichten Erstlingswerk Liza of Lambeth frühen literarischen Erfolg – und löste einen Skandal aus. In dem Roman verarbeitete Maugham Erfahrungen, die er als angehender Arzt in den Armenvierteln Londons gemacht hatte. Das Bürgertum sah es als unpassend an, die Welt der Arbeiter derart naturalistisch darzustellen.

Auf das Buch folgten Jahre der Selbstbestimmung als Autor. Zuerst arbeitete er als Dramatiker und schrieb Theaterstücke wie The Circle, Our Betters und The Constant Wife. Im frühen 20. Jahrhundert wurden gleichzeitig vier Theaterstücke von ihm in London aufgeführt. Seine Produktivität war erstaunlich: in der Regel brauchte er nur eine Woche, jeden Aufzug zu schreiben, und eine weitere Woche, das Stück zu redigieren. Später widmete er sich der Prosa und verfasste zahlreiche Romane und Kurzgeschichten.

Als Maughams bedeutendste Arbeit wird meist der Roman Der Menschen Hörigkeit angesehen, eine autobiographische Geschichte, deren Held, Philip Carey, wie Maugham als Waise bei seinem frömmlerischen Onkel aufwächst und durch einen Klumpfuß gehandicapt ist.

✵ 25. Januar 1874 – 16. Dezember 1965   •   Andere Namen Уильям Сомерсет Моэм
William Somerset Maugham Foto
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William Somerset Maugham Berühmte Zitate

„Die meisten Leute empfinden es als Beleidigung, wenn sie jemanden lieben und wenn ihre Liebe nicht erwidert wird. Sie werden böse und verbittert.“

William Somerset Maugham buch Der bunte Schleier

Original: (en) Most people, as far as I can see, when they're in love with someone and the love isn't returned feel that they have a grievance. They grow angry and bitter.
Quelle: Der bunte Schleier. (Orig.: The painted veil.) Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Anna Keller. Berlin: Verlag Volk und Welt. 1. Auflage, 1978. S. 68
Quelle: The Painted Veil. Chap. XXIII gutenberg.ca https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/maughamws-paintedveil/maughamws-paintedveil-00-h.html

„Jede Generation lächelt über die Väter, lacht über die Großväter und bewundert die Urgroßväter.“

William Somerset Maugham

„Die Leute bitten um Kritik, aber sie wollen nur gelobt werden.“

William Somerset Maugham buch Der Menschen Hörigkeit

(en) People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
Quelle: Der Menschen Hörigkeit, 1917
Quelle: Of Human Bondage. Chap. L gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/files/351/351-h/351-h.htm

„Der kluge Mann reist nur in Gedanken.“

William Somerset Maugham

Original: (en) The wise man travels only in imagination.
Quelle: Honolulu. In: Betörende Südsee. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Ilse Krämer. Frankfurt/M - Berlin - Wien: Ullstein Verlag. 1985. S. 142
Quelle: Honolulu. In: The Trembling of a Leaf – Little Stories of the South Sea Islands. Cap. III gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26854/26854-h/26854-h.htm

William Somerset Maugham: Zitate auf Englisch

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Summing Up

Quelle: The Summing Up (1938), p. 185

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Summing Up

Quelle: The Summing Up (1938), p. 67

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

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Summing Up

Quelle: The Summing Up (1938), p. 64

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

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Moon and Sixpence

Quelle: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 14, p. 54

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

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W. Somerset Maugham The Circle

The Circle
Plays

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

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Moon and Sixpence

Quelle: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 43, p. 154

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

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W. Somerset Maugham

Quelle: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 157

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

"The promise", p. 407
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

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

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Razor's Edge

p, 125
The Razor's Edge (1943)

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

"The pool", p. 123
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

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

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W. Somerset Maugham

"Death" in Sheppey, Act III (1933)
Plays

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Moon and Sixpence

Quelle: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 2, p. 11

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Summing Up

Quelle: The Summing Up (1938), p. 182

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

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W. Somerset Maugham

Vladimir Mayakovsky, The Cloud in Trousers
Misattributed

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Summing Up

Quelle: The Summing Up (1938), p. 1

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Summing Up

Quelle: The Summing Up (1938), p. 71

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

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W. Somerset Maugham

Moses Mendelssohn, Briefe über die Empfindungen (1755)
Misattributed

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

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W. Somerset Maugham

Quelle: A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 258

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

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W. Somerset Maugham

Thomas Babington Macaulay, On John Dryden (1828)
Misattributed

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

Newsweek, 23 May, 1960

“Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.”

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Summing Up

Quelle: The Summing Up (1938), p. 223

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

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W. Somerset Maugham

Quoted in Somerset Maugham (1980) by Ted Morgan

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

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W. Somerset Maugham buch Der Menschen Hörigkeit

Quelle: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 106

“The crown of literature is poetry.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

Matthew Arnold, Count Leo Tolstoi
Misattributed

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

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W. Somerset Maugham

Quelle: A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 13

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Summing Up

section 66
The Summing Up (1938)

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

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Summing Up

Quelle: The Summing Up (1938), p. 51

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham

Quelle: A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 189

“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.”

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W. Somerset Maugham buch The Moon and Sixpence

Quelle: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 6, p. 22

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