W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.

Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well

The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.

Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species.

There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.

I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.

We can none of us step into the same river twice, but the river flows on and the other river we step into is cool and refreshing, too

I promised myself that if ever I had some money that I would savor a cigar each day after lunch and dinner. This is the only resolution of my youth that I have kept, and the only realized ambition which has not brought disillusion.

The first duty of a woman is to be pretty, the second is to be well-groomed, and the third is never to contradict.

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.

She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.

To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give... You will find that people forget the failures of others very quickly.... My last piece of advice is not to let anyone see your mortification, but whatever you fancy people are saying about you to go on with your ordinary life as though nothing unpleasant had happened to you.

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.

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

Affection is created by habit, community of interests, convenience and the desire of companionship. It is a comfort rather than an exhilaration.

Art, unless it leads to right action, is no more than the opium of an intelligentsia.

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