Top 504 Quotes & Sayings by W. Somerset Maugham - Page 3

She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.

The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice

You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They're both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you're ground down by convention. You can't think as you like and you can't act as you like. That's because it's a democratic nation. I expect America's worse.

The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care? Oh, it is dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of your sight, and realize that you would not mind if you never saw her again. The tragedy of love is indifference.

Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.

Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.

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.

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.

Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.

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.

I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan't make the mistakes I've made. When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never had a chance. I'm going to bring up my daughter so that she's free and can stand on her own feet. I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he's willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.

It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

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

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.

The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.

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.

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

In religion above all things the only thing of use is an objective truth. The only God that is of use is a being who is personal, supreme and good, and whose existence is as certain as that two and two make four.

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

It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.

I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of. I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It's illimitable. It's such a happy life. There's only one thing like it, when you're up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you. You're intoxicated by the boundless space.

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.

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.

Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

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.

When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?

Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.

Genius is talent provided with ideals.

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.

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

People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.

if you'd ever had a grown-up daughter you'd know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her - well, it's much better to pretend you're the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.

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

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

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.

As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.

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

No married man's ever made up his mind until he's heard what his wife has got to say about it.

The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.

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 trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?

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

One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.

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.

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

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.

How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.

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 prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.