W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.

Benevolence is often very peremptory.

Dying is a dull, dreary affair. my advice is that you have nothing whatever to with it.

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.

The tragedy of life is that sometimes we get what we want.

I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.

Himself an ugly man, insignificantof appearance, he prized very highly comeliness in others.

Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour.

I have great affection for you, Roy" I answered, "but I don't think you are the sort of person I'd care to have breakfast with.

We do not write as we want but as we can.

Beauty is an ecstacy it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it.

Something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.

A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her . . . but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.

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

There is only one thing about which I am certain and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain.

Dinner a time when . . . one should eat wisely but not too well and talk well but not too wisely.

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

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

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.

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

Money is like a sixth sense and you can't make use of the other five without it.

We do not write as we want but as we can.

The passing moment is all we can be sure of it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.

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.

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.