W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.

A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.

The great trues are too important to be new.

There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species.

But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you; it may have other and much more profound meanings for the critic, but at second-hand they can be of small service to you.

Love is not always blind and there are few things that cause greater wretchedness than to love with all your heart someone who you know is unworthy of love.

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul.

The drama is make-believe. It does not deal with truth but with effect.

It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred man.

The value of money is that with it we can tell any man to go to the devil. It is the sixth sense which enables you to enjoy the other five.

Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.

With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself.

Art, if it is to be reckoned as one of the great values of life, must teach man humility, tolerance, wisdom and magnanimity. The value of art is not beauty, but right action.

Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.

The life force is vigorous. The delight that accompanies it counter-balances all the pains and hardships that confront men. It makes life worth living.

Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art. ~Waddington

There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.

It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.

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.

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

Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.

A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self indulgence.

There is no more merit in being able to attach a correct description to a picture than in being able to find out what is wrong with a stalled motorcar. In each case it is special knowledge.

It is good to be on your guard against an Englishman who speaks French perfectly; he is very likely to be a card-sharper or an attache in the diplomatic service.

There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.

A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.

I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.

A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.

The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel.

Why did you look at the sunset?' Philip answered with his mouth full: Because I was happy.

Do you absolutely despise me, Walter?" "No." He hesitated and his voice was strange. "I despise myself.

Evil can be condoned only if in the beyond it is compensated by good and god himself needs immortality to vindicate his ways to man.

The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness.

The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible.

The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so.

Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.

The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too. [The human element]

There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.

Nothing more predisposes someone in our favour than to let him rob you a little.

Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.

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

and he loved her suddenly because she loved him.

Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.

People are always a little disconcerted when you don't recognize them, they are so important to themselves, it is a shock to discover of what small importance they are to others. [The human element]

I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.

It does the heart good to look at you.

Her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.

Because a man can write great works he is none the less a man.

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

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