W. Somerset Maugham Quotations

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

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.

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.

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

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.

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.

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

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.

The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.

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.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

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.

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.

An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

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.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.'

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

When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.

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

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.

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

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.

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

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

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

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.

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

You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

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

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

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.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

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.

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.

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.

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

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

The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

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

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.

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

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

If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.

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.

We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.

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

The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.

Have common sense and stick to the point.

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.

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

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

Love is what happens to a man and woman who don't know each other.

Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to find in their butlers.

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

Lady Hodmarsh and the duchess immediately assumed the clinging affability that persons of rank assume with their inferiors in order to show them that they are not in the least conscious of any difference in station between them.

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

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.

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

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.

The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

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. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.

American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.

It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule. You are puzzled because you cannot get over the idea that pleasures are only of the sense; but, child, a man who dies for his country dies because he likes it as surely as a man eats pickled cabbage because he likes it.

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...

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