A Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.

W. Somerset Maugham

Quote Topics

Easy Only Phrase Prefer Test Unaffected Usage

Quote Author

W. Somerset Maugham
British - Novelist
January 25, 1874 - December 16, 1965

I use the phrase "fellow citizen" all the time when referring to the - people always say, "The American people, the American people." I prefer the phrase fellow citizen because there's a power in that, there's a responsibility, there's a duty in using that phrase fellow citizen.

Tavis Smiley

I really wish there had been a way to phrase this as 'A thunder of worms.' Because I like that phrase. That's a phrase with soul. Worm thunder on the horizon, all is right with the cosmos.

Ursula Vernon

What lasts in the reader's mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what's it doing there? Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse.

Isaac Asimov

I began thinking there should be an American phrase book, 'cause I've got an Italian phrase book, and an Arabic one... now a British one. I think it'd be pretty good to have an American phrase book.

Joe Strummer

Trump uses the phrase 'America First,' only dimly aware that he is repeating a phrase from the interwar years and indifferent to its historic resonances. But he compulsively echoes that period - another time when leaders described the world in apocalyptic terms.

Franklin Foer

In a sense there is no 'opposition' in Bahrain, as the phrase implies one unified block with the same views. Such a phrase is not in our constitution, unlike say the United Kingdom. We only have people with different views and that's ok.

Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa

I think that phrase is the most horrible phrase in the English language - 'I don't know.' It's terribly embarrassing.

Jim Morrison

When you're singing we all phrase each other in the most remarkable ways. I might hit some sort of thing I've never done before - some vocal pattern. Bonzo will pick it up - he'll phrase with me instantly and then Pagey may join in or start some other phrase - it's like a quadrant.

Robert Plant

The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.

Raymond Chandler

If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.

William James

If the general attitude of Canadians toward their mighty neighbor to the south could be distilled into a single phrase, that phrase would probably be "Oh, shut up."

Bruce McCall

The one thing that makes me laugh about the phrase 'the worst week of my life' is that nobody actually uses that phrase when something really bad happens.

Ben Miller

A song doesn't happen as a whole verse; it happens linearly, line by line, almost word by word, phrase by phrase. And if each phrase, each line, has a proper emotional feel and connects to the line before it and the line after it, the song will be doing what it should be doing.