W. Somerset Maugham Quotes (150 Quotes)


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

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

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

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


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

    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.


    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.

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

    Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.


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

    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.


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

    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.


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


    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.


    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.



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

    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.

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

    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.

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

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

    Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments it is a whole-time job.

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

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


    By the time a man notices that he is no longer young, his youth has long since left him.

    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.

    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.

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

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

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

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


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

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


    It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

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

    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.



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