Best 558 quotes of W. Somerset Maugham on MyQuotes

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.

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

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.

Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.

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.

Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.

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

Do you absolutely despise me, Walter?" "No." He hesitated and his voice was strange. "I despise myself.

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

"Do you like card tricks?" "No, I hate card tricks," I answered. "Well, I`ll just show you this one." He showed me three.

Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband.

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.

Everyone had some defect, or body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was like a sick house and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed in body, warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor of will, or craving for liquor. At that moment he felt a holy compassion for them all. …The words of the dying God crossed his memory: Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Evil can be condoned only if in the beyond it is compensated by good and god himself needs immortality to vindicate his ways to man.

Evil is a necessary part of the order of the universe.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

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 consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.

First, cut out all the wisdom, then cut out all the adjectives.

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.

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or 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.

For men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it an importance which is untrue to life. There are few men to whom it is the most important thing in the world, and they are not the very interesting ones; even women, with whom the subject is of paramount interest, have a contempt for them.

For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.

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

Freedom! That was the thought that sung in her heart so that even though the future was so dim, it was iridescent like the mist over the river where the morning sun fell upon it. Freedom! Not only freedom from a bond that irked, and a companionship which depressed her; freedom, not only from the death which had threatened, but freedom from the love that had degraded her; freedom from all spiritual ties, the freedom of a disembodied spirit, and with freedom, courage , and a valiant unconcern for whatever was to come.

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

From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.

Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.

Genius is talent provided with ideals.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil of the world? If the evils we suffer are the result of sins committed in our past lives, we can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive toward virtue out future lives will be less afflicted.

Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experience he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.

He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.

He exulted in the possession of himself once more; he realized how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called love; he had had enough of it; he did not want to be in love anymore if love was that.

He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.

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

He is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.

He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.

Her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.

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.

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.

I am afraid of people with too much charm. They devour you. In the end you are made a sacrifice to the exercise of their fascinating gift and their insincerity.

I am sick of this way of life. The weariness and sadness of old age make it intolerable. I have walked with death in hand, and death's own hand is warmer than my own. I don't wish to live any longer.

I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to the universities go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene ... They are scum.

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.

I can only guess that it made the world he went back to...strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he even enjoyed it, it remained utterly remote. I think it had lost sense for him. In his heart was the reflection of a lovely dream that he could never quite recall.

I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.

...I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocracy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing plesures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due.

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.

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