Top 504 Quotes & Sayings by W. Somerset Maugham
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British novelist W. Somerset Maugham.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
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.
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.
Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
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.
The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
Writing is the supreme solace.
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
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.
The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
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.
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
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.
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
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.
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.
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.
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
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.
My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.'
The crown of literature is poetry.
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.
Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.
If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
Tolerance is another word for indifference.
When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.
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