W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.
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The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain.
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I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.
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Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art. ~Waddington
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A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.
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No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you.
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She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.
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Advice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
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No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point; but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess.
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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.
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A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
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Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.
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There is no more merit in being able to attach a correct description to a picture than in being able to find out what is wrong with a stalled motorcar. In each case it is special knowledge.
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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.
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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.
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The nature of men and women - their essential nature – is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.
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Women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.
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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.
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She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.” Waddington, smiling, translated the question. “She says I’m good.” “As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue,” Kitty mocked.
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As we grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and unreasonableness of human beings; this indeed is the only excuse that offers for the middle-aged or elderly writer whose thoughts should more properly be turned to graver matters, occupying himself with the trivial concerns of imaginary people.
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Art, if it is to be reckoned as one of the great values of life, must teach man humility, tolerance, wisdom and magnanimity. The value of art is not beauty, but right action.
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The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so, and by the manipulation of his plot, he can engage the reader's attention so that he does not perceive the violence that has been done to him.
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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.
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When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.