William Somerset Maugham Quotes (28 Quotes)

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

The tragedy of love is indifference.

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

She Sadie Thompson gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer. 'You men You filthy dirty pigs Youre all the same, all of you. Pigs Pigs'

I forget who it was that recommended men for their souls good to do each day two things they disliked.... It is a precept I have followed scrupulously for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.

Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.

Genius is talent provided with ideals.

When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. He was a religious man and he read prayers to the assembled household every morning. But he had crossed out in pencil all the passages that praised God. He said that there was nothing so vulgar as to praise people to their faces and, himself a gentleman, he could not believe that God was so ungentlemanly as to like it.

You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

Perfection - Nothing more than a complete adaptation to the environment but the environment is constantly changing, so perfection can never be more than transitory.

Its funny about life if you refuse to accept anything but the very best you will very often get it.

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, But that they cease to love.

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.

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

To write simply is as difficult as to be good.

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

There is nothing but art. Art is living. To attempt to give an object of art life by dwelling on its historical, cultural, or archaeological association is senseless.

I Death was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

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

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

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

Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life But it wants leisure.

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.

Commonsense and good nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.

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.

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

There was once a professor of law who said to his students. When you are fighting a case, if you have facts on your side hammer them into the jury, and if you have the law on your side hammer it into the judge. But if you have neither the facts nor the law, asked one of his listeners Then hammer the hell into the table, answered the professor.

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by make-believe.