W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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She had a very agreeable smile; it did not light up her face suddenly, but seemed rather to suffuse it by degrees with charm. It hesitated for a moment about her lips and then slowly travelled to those great shining eyes of hers and there softly lingered.
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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.
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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.
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Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
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At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
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We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
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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.
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There are men who are possessed by an urge so strong to do some particular thing that they can't help themselves, they've got to do it. They're prepared to sacrifice everything to satisfy their yearning.
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The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
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He loved her so passionately he wanted her to be one soul and one body with him; and he was conscious that here, with those deep roots attaching her to the native life, she would always keep something from him.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul’s good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.
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Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
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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.
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Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
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An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
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Life isn't long enough for love and art.
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The poignancy which all beauty has.
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To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day.
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We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
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Don't you know? Because American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
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In art honesty is not only the best but the only policy.