W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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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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Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.
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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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The first duty of a woman is to be pretty, the second is to be well-groomed, and the third is never to contradict.
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The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of thought; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.
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I am a little shy of any assumption of moral indignation. There is always in it an element of self-satisfaction which makes it awkward to anyone who has a sense of humour.
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I've met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation.
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The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
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Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.
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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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But who can fathom the subtleties of the human heart? Certainly not those who expect from it only decorous sentiments and normal emotions.
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There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.
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Religion is...a conspiracy of...priests to gain control over the people...
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It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic.
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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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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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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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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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When we come to judge others it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world.
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Life is really very fantastic, and one has to have a peculiar sense of humour to see the fun of it. [Virtue]
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There are many foolish people in the world and when a man in a rather high position puts on no frills, slaps them on the back, and tells them he'll do anything in the world for them, they are very likely to think him clever.
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We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us.
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It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.
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Men are always the same. Fear makes them cruel.