Top 504 Quotes & Sayings by W. Somerset Maugham - Page 2

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

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

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

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

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

Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.

Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.

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

We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.

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

I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.

Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.

Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.

Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.

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

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

Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.

Have common sense and stick to the point.

It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.

As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.

I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.

Tolerance is only another name for indifference.

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

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

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.

When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.

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

Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.

It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.

If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.

A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.

Throw yourself into the hurly-burly of life. It doesn't matter how many mistakes you make, what unhappiness you have to undergo. It is all your material ... Don't wait for experience to come to you; go out after experience. Experience is your material.

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

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

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.

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.

Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.

There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood.

The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.

Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.

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

Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband.

Now the answer ... is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.

The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life.

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

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

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

I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.

Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.

Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.