W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.
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I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
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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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Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil of the world? If the evils we suffer are the result of sins committed in our past lives, we can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive toward virtue out future lives will be less afflicted.
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Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination; it is the privilege of the artist that with him it is not as with other men an escape from reality, but the means by which he accedes to it.
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She was making money. But she could not get over the idea that to earn her living was somewhat undignified, and she was inclined to remind you that she was a lady by birth.
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Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.
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Now the answer ... is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.
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Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.
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I'm not only my spirit buy my body, and who can decide how much I, my individual self, am conditioned by the accident of my body? Would Byron have been Byron but for his club foot, or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky without his epilepsy?
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All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
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People are always a little disconcerted when you don't recognize them, they are so important to themselves, it is a shock to discover of what small importance they are to others. [The human element]
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The modern clergyman has acquired in his study of the science which I believe is called exegesis an astonishing facility for explaining things away.
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In heaven, when the blessed use the telephone they will say what they have to say and not a word besides.
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It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him.
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I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.
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You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now.
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I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.
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When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?
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A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
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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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I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.
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Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.
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She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.