W. Somerset Maugham quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from W. Somerset Maugham on Wise Famous Quotes.

I do not know if others are like myself, but I am conscious that I cannot contemplate beauty long.

I wonder if it's ok being a second-rate painter.

... I do not mind odious young men; it is when they are charming that I button up the pockets of my sympathy.

Mrs Carey sighted as a woman but obey as a wife.

When feeling is the gauge, you can snap your fingers at logic

She did not know why it seemed to her so tragic to cry in her sleep.

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.

Because a man can write great works he is none the less a man.

It's a very funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

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.

When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.

Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.

The fact was that he had ceased to believe not for this reason or the other, but because he had not the religious temperament.

PORTEOUS: Do you mean to say you were going to steal my car.
TEDDIE: Not exactly. I was only going to bolshevise it, so to speak.

Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.

No one ever died of love yet, said the prioress with a savage bitterness.

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few.

Saw everything larger than life size, with the outlines blurred, in a golden mist of sentimentality.

He felt a queer little pang of bitterness because reality seemed so different from the ideal

The painted veil which those who live call life

You're so sharp you'll cut yourself if you don't look out,

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

The end of culture is right living

But beauty is not the only thing that makes a woman attractive; indeed, great beauty is often somewhat chilling: you admire, but are not moved.

The great have no friends, dear Blasco. It is the price they must pay for their greatness.

Philip had a practical outlook and he grew impatient with the theories which resulted in no action.

Some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not.

And you call yourself an English gentleman,' she exclaimed, savagely.
'No, that's a thing I've never done in all my life.

Dying is a dull, dreary affair. my advice is that you have nothing whatever to with it.

But every well has a bottom and finally your friend will come to the end of what he has to tell you:

They had furtive eyes and weak chins. There was no wickedness in them, but only pettiness and vulgarity.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Its a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, few are chosen.

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

Love will be stronger and last longer if there are impediments to its gratification.

The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.

Laugh while you've got the chance, you won't laugh much when you are dead and buried.

We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.

we do not write as we want but as we can

Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.

Life is there to be lived rather than to be written about.

One could reconcile oneself to existence only because it was meaningless. It

Have some whiskey,there's nothing like it for clearing the head. You must expect to be thick-witted if you insist upon drinking beer.

He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.

Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.

To the acute observer no one can produce the most casual work without disclosing the innermost secrets of his soul.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.

You cannot write unless you write much.

It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.

It was a pity that with his great qualities, his unselfishness and honor, his intelligence and sensibility, he should be so unlovable.

The summer came upon the country like a conqueror.

Whenever he started a book with two solitary travellers riding along the brink of a desperate ravine he knew he was safe. The

And he loved her suddenly because she loved him.

I did not hesitate to put the question that came to the tip of my tongue. After all, if you want to know something the best way is to ask.

She was like a silvery flower of the night that only gave its perfume to the moonbeams.

Imagination's an odd thing, it dries up;
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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.

No egoism is so insufferable as the Christian with regard to his soul.

Art for art's sake makes no more sense than gin for gin's sake.

A God that can be understood is no God. Who can explain the Infinite in words?

I should have known that I wasn't meant for happiness and a life of ease. I have other work to do in the world.

The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.

Roy has always sincerely believed what everyone else believed at the moment.

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.

No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.

The great trues are too important to be new.

The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned

Did you really cease to love a person because you had been treated cruelly?

We were staggered and immediately on the defensive, for she looked intellectual, and it made us feel shy.

The audience is a very curious animal. It is shrewd rather than intelligent. Its mental capacity is less than that of its most intellectual members.

Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.

I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull.

A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.

Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.

Writing is the supreme solace.

In the midst of life we are in death
one can never tell what may happen.

I've met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation.

The drama is make-believe. It does not deal with truth but with effect.

We are foolish and sentimental and melodramatic at twenty-five, but if we weren't perhaps we should be less wise at fifty.

They say that happy people have no history, and certainly a happy love has none. They did nothing all day long and yet the days seemed all too short.

It's only the boring who are bored.

I'm one of the few persons I ever met who are able to learn from experience.

As we know, Christian charity has always been able to make allowances for a lot of good honest hatred, ...

He mingled idleness and idealism so that he could not separate them.

Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.

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

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
W. Somerset Maugham

It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.

I happen to think we've set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.

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.

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.

But if the folly of men made one angry one would pass one's life in a state of chronic ire.

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.

The fact is, I suppose, that it's not enough to have brains. The thing that counts is character.

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.

Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.