Popular

Browse Popular Topics

Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham


It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
– W. Somerset Maugham
A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.
– W. Somerset Maugham
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.
– W. Somerset Maugham
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.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Have common sense and stick to the point.
– W. Somerset Maugham
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.
– W. Somerset Maugham
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.
– W. Somerset Maugham
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.
– W. Somerset Maugham
I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
– W. Somerset Maugham
If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
– W. Somerset Maugham
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
– W. Somerset Maugham
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
– W. Somerset Maugham
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.
– W. Somerset Maugham
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
– W. Somerset Maugham
It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.
– W. Somerset Maugham
It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.
– W. Somerset Maugham
It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say I don't know.
– W. Somerset Maugham
It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
– W. Somerset Maugham
It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.
– W. Somerset Maugham
My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
– W. Somerset Maugham
No gray hairs streak my soul, no grandfatherly fondness there! I shake the world with the might of my voice, and walk -handsome, twenty-two year old.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.
– W. Somerset Maugham
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.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
– W. Somerset Maugham
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.
– W. Somerset Maugham
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.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The crown of literature is poetry.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
– W. Somerset Maugham
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
– W. Somerset Maugham
There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.
– W. Somerset Maugham
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
– W. Somerset Maugham
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.
– W. Somerset Maugham
To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Tolerance is another word for indifference.
– W. Somerset Maugham
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
– W. Somerset Maugham
We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.
– W. Somerset Maugham
We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
– W. Somerset Maugham
We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
– W. Somerset Maugham
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.
– W. Somerset Maugham
What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
– W. Somerset Maugham
When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Writing is the supreme solace.
– W. Somerset Maugham
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
– W. Somerset Maugham
You can do anything in this world if you are prepares to take the consequences.
– W. Somerset Maugham
You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
– W. Somerset Maugham
You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
– W. Somerset Maugham
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
– W. Somerset Maugham
We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
– W. Somerset Maugham
When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.
– W. Somerset Maugham
It was such a lovely day I thought it was a pity to get up.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.
– W. Somerset Maugham
D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
– W. Somerset Maugham
He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.
– W. Somerset Maugham
I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.
– W. Somerset Maugham
I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world.
– W. Somerset Maugham
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.
– W. Somerset Maugham
It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.
– W. Somerset Maugham
It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
– W. Somerset Maugham
The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.
– W. Somerset Maugham
There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.
– W. Somerset Maugham
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
– W. Somerset Maugham
When things are at their worst I find something always happens.
– W. Somerset Maugham
A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
– W. Somerset Maugham
I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Life isn't long enough for love and art.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
– W. Somerset Maugham
When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
– W. Somerset Maugham
It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.
– W. Somerset Maugham