W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Life is really very fantastic, and one has to have a peculiar sense of humour to see the fun of it. [Virtue]

As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.

An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.

Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.

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

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

You see, money to you means freedom; to me it means bondage.

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.

We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us.

No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you.

The humorist has a good eye for the humbug; he does not always recognize the saint.

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.

When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.

I happen to think we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.

Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.

Never pause unless you have a reason for it, but when you pause, pause as long as you can.

The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.

A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.

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

She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.

Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part.

I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.

He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.

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

She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?

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

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

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

The good traveler has the gift of surprise.

In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.

Almost all the people who’ve had the most effect on me I seem to have met by chance, yet looking back it seems as though I couldn’t but have met them.

Women's hearts are like old china, none the worse for a break or two.

What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?

The first duty of a woman is to be pretty, the second is to be well-groomed, and the third is never to contradict.

Men have ascribed to God imperfections that they would deplore in themselves.

We can none of us step into the same river twice, but the river flows on and the other river we step into is cool and refreshing, too

I've met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation.

You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now.

You must not pursue a success, but fly from it.

I'm only twenty-five. If I've made a mistake I have time to correct it.

It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.

It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.

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

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

A woman may be as wicked as she likes, but if she isn't pretty it won't do her much good.

I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull.

A good rule for writers: do not explain overmuch.

The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.

I wonder how anyone can have the face to condemn others when he reflects upon his own thoughts.

Culture is not just an ornament; it is the expression of a nation's character, and at the same time it is a powerful instrument to mould character. The end of culture is right living.