W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.

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.

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.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.

You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.

Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.

When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.

You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack.

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?

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

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.

Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness.

Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists.

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.

I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.

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

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.

I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense.

A woman may be as wicked as she likes, but if she isn't pretty it won't do her much good.

When things are at their worst, I find something always happens.

No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you.

Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.

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

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.

Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experience he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.

The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.

Genius is talent provided with ideals.

The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.

Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part.

It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.

Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.

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

Some American delusions: 1) That there is no class-consciousness in the country. 2) That American coffee is good. 3) That Americans are business-like. 4) That Americans are highly-sexed and that redheads are more highly sexed than others.

The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible.

Refecting on the high divorce rate in America as contrasted with England "American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers

And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.

The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you.

A soul is a troublesome possession, and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.

When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.

There are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort.

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

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.

When a man's in love, he at once makes a pedestal of the Ten Commandments and stands on the top of them with his arms akimbo. When a woman's in love she doesn't care two straws for Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not.

When she liked anyone it was quite natural for her to go to bed with him. She never thought twice about it. It was not vice; it wasn't lasciviousness; it was her nature. She gave herself as naturally as the sun gives heat or the flowers their perfume. It was a pleasure to her and she liked to give pleasure to others.

We Americans... like change. It is at once our weakness and our strength.

Her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.