W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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Passion doesn't count the cost. … Passion is destructive.
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The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
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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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... the Eternal turned his attention to the three shades who stood humbly and yet hopefully before him. The quick, with so short a time to live, when they talk of themselves, talk too much; but the dead, with eternity before them, are so verbose that only angels could listen to them with civility.
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You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
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He had doubts about the utility of examination on subjects which had been crammed for the occasion. He wanted common sense.
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She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness; it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.
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He made one laugh sometimes by speaking the truth, but this is a form of humour which gains its force only by its unusualness; it would cease to amuse if it were commonly practised.
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The life force is vigorous. The delight that accompanies it counter-balances all the pains and hardships that confront men. It makes life worth living.
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An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.
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I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
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…the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
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Art... is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.
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They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection; but perhaps she does not always remember him.
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There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.
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I thought I should be a fool to allow work to interfere with a delight in the passing moment that I might never enjoy again so fully.
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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.
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The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you.
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I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.
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Tahiti is very far away, and I knew that I should never see it again. A chapter of my life was closed, and I felt a little nearer to inevitable death.
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You will have to learn many tedious things,...which you will forget the moment you have passed your final examination, but in anatomy it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
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An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.
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The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.
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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.