W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

The life force is vigorous. The delight that accompanies it counter-balances all the pains and hardships that confront men. It makes life worth living.

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

The tragedy of love is indifference.

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.

He exulted in the possession of himself once more; he realized how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called love; he had had enough of it; he did not want to be in love anymore if love was that.

I'm only twenty-five. If I've made a mistake I have time to correct it.

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.

Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.

Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.

The inclination to digress is human. But the dramatist must avoid it even more strenuously than the saint must avoid sin, for while sin may be venial, digression is mortal.

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.

To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.

There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.

Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.

I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it. They have no manners and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public house and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious . They are scum.

The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.

A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.

The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.

The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too. [The human element]

Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.

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.

Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one can't afford to waste a minute; and just think how much you waste, for instance, in walking from place to place instead of going by bus and in going by bus instead of by taxi.

He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.

I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the center of the world.

It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.

It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.

The artist can within limits make what he likes of his life... It is only the artist, and maybe the criminal, who can make his own.

The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so.

The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure; indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.

But I am not sure it would contain any short stories. For the short story is a minor art, and it must content itself with moving, exciting and amusing the reader. ...I do not think that there is any (short story) that will give the reader that thrill, that rapture, that fruitful energy which great art can produce.

There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.

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

Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.

She was a fool and he knew it and because he loved her it had made no difference.

There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.

We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.

Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.

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.

Have common sense and stick to the point.

There's nothing the world loves more than a ready-made description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.

When some incident has shattered the career you’ve mapped out for yourself, a folly, a crime or a misfortune, you mustn’t think you’re down and out. It may be a stroke of luck, and when you look back years later you may say to yourself that you wouldn’t for anything in the world exchange the new life disaster has forced upon you for the dull, humdrum existence you would have led if circumstances hadn’t intervened.

I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.

Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm aches, and still they love you.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Of course, it is one of the most absurd illusions of Christianity that they have souls.

There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.