W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

When you're eighteen your emotions are violent, but they're not durable.

A man filled with meat turns his back on the dry bones of political doctrine. Fanatical devotion to the ruling party comes more readily from the materially deprived At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of thought; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.

Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.

What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.

Evil can be condoned only if in the beyond it is compensated by good and god himself needs immortality to vindicate his ways to man.

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

I prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool.

Nothing more predisposes someone in our favour than to let him rob you a little.

You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life -- their pleasure.

Evil is a necessary part of the order of the universe.

When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.

She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness; it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.

He is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.

For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness.

It is good to be on your guard against an Englishman who speaks French perfectly; he is very likely to be a card-sharper or an attache in the diplomatic service.

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.

Comedy appeals to the collective mind of the audience and this grows fatigued; while farce appeals to a more robust organ, their collective belly.

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

No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.

Look after your laundry, and your soul will look after itself.

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

Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.

Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.

I did not believe him capable of love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness either for himself or for others; there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to protect, an eagerness to do good and to give pleasure--if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously conceals itself; it has in it a certain diffidence.

He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.

It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred man.

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

But there are people who take salt with their coffee. They say it gives a tang, a savour, which is peculiar and fascinating. In the same way there are certain places, surrounded by a halo of romance, to which the inevitable disillusionment you experience on seeing them gives a singular spice. You had expected something wholly beautiful and you get an impression which is infinitely more complicated than any that beauty can give you. It is the weakness in the character of a great man which may make him less admirable but certainly more interesting. Nothing had prepared me for Honolulu.

Sometimes the road was only a lane, with thick hawthorne hedges, and the green elms overhung it on either side so that when you looked up there was only a strip of blue sky between. And as you rode along in the warm, keen air you had a sensation that the world was standing still and life would last forever. Although you were pedaling with such energy you had a delicious feeling of laziness.

It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.

A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.

She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.

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

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.

I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay.

Women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.

Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.

The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.

Our wise old church...has discovered that if you will act as if you believed belief will be given to you; if you pray with doubt, but pray with sincerity, your doubt will be dispelled; if you will surrender yourself to the beauty of that liturgy the power of which over the human spirit has been proved by the experience of the ages, peace will descend upon you.

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.

From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.

The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.

It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.