W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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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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Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.
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She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.
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It is very natural that clever young men should be rather odious. They are conscious of gifts that they do not know how to use. They are exasperated with the world that will not recognize their merit. They have something to give, and no hand is stretched out to receive it. They are impatient for the fame they regard as their due.
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Women are always glad to listen when you discourse upon love...
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What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.
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It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.
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There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain.
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'I sometimes think,' said the Eternal, 'that the stars never shine more brightly than when reflected in the muddy waters of a wayside ditch.'
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We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
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Love is not always blind and there are few things that cause greater wretchedness than to love with all your heart someone who you know is unworthy of love.
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People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
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It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.
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I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man nothing but instant flight could save him.
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It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.
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We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.
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Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
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She gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer. 'You men! You filthy dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!'
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He had a bitter pain in his heart, for he knew that she was still a stranger to him and his hungry love was destined ever to remain unsatisfied.
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He was the kind of man with whom one would have hesitated to pass a lonely evening, but with whom one might cheerfully have looked forward to spending six months.
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Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.
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Bob Forestier had pretended for so many years to be a gentleman that in the end, forgetting that it was all a fake, he had found himself driven to act as in that stupid, conventional brain of his he thought a gentleman must act. No longer knowing the difference between sham and real, he had sacrificed his life to a spurious heroism.
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Passion doesn't count the cost. … Passion is destructive.
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Religion is...a conspiracy of...priests to gain control over the people...