Best Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham (Top 10)
-
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
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
-
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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
-
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
W. Somerset Maugham
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
-
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life.
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
-
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
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
-
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan't make the mistakes I've made. When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never had a chance. I'm going to bring up my daughter so that she's free and can stand on her own feet. I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he's willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
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
-
We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
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 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
-
Life isn't long enough for love and art.
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
-
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.
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
-
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
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
-
The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.
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. It is failure that makes people bitter and cruel.
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
-
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?
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
-
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the center of the world.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
To write simply is as difficult as to be good.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.
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 ideals which have been instilled in them, and each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
The nature of men and women - their essential nature - is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
We do not write as we want, but as we can.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to find in their butlers.
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
-
The end of culture is right living
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
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
-
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
-
Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
W. Somerset Maugham