W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn’t want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
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.
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.
Death doesn’t affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn’t concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.
Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
Have common sense and stick to the point.
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
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.
I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They
are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
I’ll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell… their heart’s in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
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.
If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.
It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.
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