W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.

It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.

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

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

A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.

I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.

To write simply is as difficult as to be good.

I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.

Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.

Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.

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

It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.

I'm afraid you've thought me a bigger fool than I am.

Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.

Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.

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

Tolerance is another word for indifference.

They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection; but perhaps she does not always remember him.

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

You cannot write well or much (and I venture the opinion that you cannot write well unless you write much) unless you form a habit.

Its a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, few are chosen.

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.

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

Beauty is also a Gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful, if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.

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.

Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.

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.

One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.

It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage

There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood.

Refecting on the high divorce rate in America as contrasted with England "American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers

Affection is created by habit, community of interests, convenience and the desire of companionship. It is a comfort rather than an exhilaration.

The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.

Art, unless it leads to right action, is no more than the opium of an intelligentsia.

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

From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.

Success. I don't believe it has any effect on me. For one thing I always expected it.

I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the center of the world.

Advice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.

Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.

The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.

Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.

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

For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity.

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.