W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.
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The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.
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Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.
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It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.
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I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas.
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Do you absolutely despise me, Walter?" "No." He hesitated and his voice was strange. "I despise myself.
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You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack.
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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?
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The normal is what you find but rarely. The normal is an ideal. It is a picture that one fabricates of the average characteristics of men, and to find them all in a single man is hardly to be expected.
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There's nothing the world loves more than a ready-made description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.
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Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.
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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.
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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.
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I promised myself that if ever I had some money that I would savor a cigar each day after lunch and dinner. This is the only resolution of my youth that I have kept, and the only realized ambition which has not brought disillusion.
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Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm aches, and still they love you.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Of course, it is one of the most absurd illusions of Christianity that they have souls.
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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.