W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.
When you're eighteen your emotions are violent, but they're not durable.
It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.
It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.
A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
The tragedy of love is indifference.
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
A God that can be understood is no God. Who can explain the Infinite in words?
Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.
Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
Religion is a conspiracy of priests to gain control over the people.
Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
Life isn't long enough for love and art.
We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
Love is what happens to a man and woman who don't know each other.
There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species.
If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.
The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
In art honesty is not only the best but the only policy.
What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action.
I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.
People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
Wounded vanity can make a woman more vindictive that a lioness robbed of her cubs.
The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.
If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
Writing is the supreme solace.
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit…
You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
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.
For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.
It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
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.
Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain.
D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
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.
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.
The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.
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 practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.
Now the world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
You know, my dear child, that one cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.
I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world.
I have not been afraid of excess: excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother.
There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.
Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man who isn't quite so delightful but a little more sincere.
He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.
Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.
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.
If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.
Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.
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.
Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it…
Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
She saw shrewdly that the world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willingly avoids the sight of distress.
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.
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.
Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives... by make-believe.
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.
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.
Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.
As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
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.
How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank, and independent.
Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded.
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self- complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.
When I look back on my life…it seems to me strangely lacking in reality.
It may be that my heart, having found rest nowhere, had some deep ancestral craving for God and immortality which my reason would have no truck with.
There can be nothing so gratifying to an author as to arouse the respect and esteem of the reader. Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.
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.
Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.
Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one can't afford to waste a minute; and just think how much you waste, for instance, in walking from place to place instead of going by bus and in going by bus instead of by taxi.
I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.
It was one of the queer things of life that you saw a person every day for months and were so intimate with him that you could not imagine existence without him; then separation came, and everything went on in the same way, and the companion who had seemed essential proved unnecessary.
Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.
He did not live, he observed life from a window, and too often was inclined to content himself with no more than what his friends told him they saw when they looked out of a window.... In the end the point of Henry James is neither his artistry nor his seriousness, but his personality, and this was curious and charming and a trifle absurd.
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.
The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for nothing but money. We are nothing for it; the moment we have it we spend it, sometimes well, sometimes ill, but we spend it. Money is nothing to us; it's merely the symbol of success. We are the greatest idealists in the world; I happen to think that 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.
It is very difficult to know people and I don't think one can ever really know any but one's own countrymen. For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives' tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them.
