Quotes & Sayings About Somerset Maugham

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? — W. Somerset Maugham

It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me. — W. Somerset Maugham

I'm one of the few persons I ever met who are able to learn from experience. — W. Somerset Maugham

Have you ever thought of death?" "Why should I? It doesn't matter. — W. Somerset Maugham

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable. — W. Somerset Maugham

It is good to be on your guard against an Englishman who speaks French perfectly; he is very likely to be a card-sharper or an attache in the diplomatic service. — W. Somerset Maugham

A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life. — W. Somerset Maugham

When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? — W. Somerset Maugham

I describe myself as a member of the Church of England, which I suppose is an inoffensive way of saying that you don't believe in anything very much — William Somerset Maugham

It was a night so beautiful that your soul seemed hardly able to bear the prison of the body. — W. Somerset Maugham

It does the heart good to look at you. — W. Somerset Maugham

The summer came upon the country like a conqueror. — W. Somerset Maugham

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists. — W. Somerset Maugham

They ordered punch. They drank it. It was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous term, jewelled, exotic phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and cleared the head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the mind at once to utter wit, and to appreciate the wit of others; it had the vagueness of music and the precision of mathematics. Only one of its qualities was comparable to anything else; it had the warmth of a good heart; but its taste, its smell, its feel, were not to be described in words. — W. Somerset Maugham

There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment. — W. Somerset Maugham

The artist can within limits make what he likes of his life ... It is only the artist, and maybe the criminal, who can make his own. — W. Somerset Maugham

The good traveler has the gift of surprise. — W. Somerset Maugham

It is said Somerset Maugham traveled the world with a notebook to learn the essence of life and Kafka sat in a room for the same objective. Yet Kafka came out with a better world-view. — U.R. Ananthamurthy

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them? — W. Somerset Maugham

I can only guess that it made the world he went back to ... strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he even enjoyed it, it remained utterly remote. I think it had lost sense for him. In his heart was the reflection of a lovely dream that he could never quite recall. — W. Somerset Maugham

I never expected you to love me, I didn't see any reason that you should, I never thought myself very lovable. — W. Somerset Maugham

Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
~Waddington — W. Somerset Maugham

There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none? — W. Somerset Maugham

I did not believe him capable of love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness either for himself or for others; there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to protect, an eagerness to do good and to give pleasure
if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously conceals itself; it has in it a certain diffidence. — W. Somerset Maugham

There was neither good nor bad there. There were just facts. It was life. — W. Somerset Maugham

to follow one's instincts with due regard to the policeman round the corner, had not acted very well there: it was because Cronshaw had done this that he had made such a lamentable failure of existence. It seemed that the instincts could not be trusted. Philip was puzzled, and he asked himself what rule of life was there, if that one was useless, and why people acted in one way rather than in another. They acted according to their emotions, but their emotions might be good or bad; it seemed just a chance whether they led to triumph or disaster. Life seemed an inextricable confusion. Men hurried hither and thither, urged by forces they knew not; and the purpose of it all escaped them; they seemed to hurry just for hurrying's sake. — William Somerset Maugham

You don't know the difference between truth and make-believe. You never stop acting. It's second nature to you. You act when there's a party here. You act to the servants, you act to father, you act to me. To me you act the part of the fond, indulgent, celebrated mother. You don't exist, you're only the innumerable parts you've played. I've often wondered if there was ever a you or if you were never anything more than a vehicle for all these other people that you've pretended to be. When I've seen you go into an empty room I've sometimes wanted to open the door suddenly, but I've been afraid to in case I found nobody there. — W. Somerset Maugham

She loved three things - a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man. — W. Somerset Maugham

And who, pray, is to choose the master?" "Nobody. He's the ineluctable product of circumstances." "That's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it?" "He rises to the top because he has the instinct to lead. He has the will to power. He has audacity and enthusiasm, ability, industry and energy. He fears nothing because to him danger is the salt of life." "No one could say that you hadn't a good conceit of yourself, Simon," smiled Charley. — W. Somerset Maugham

I do not believe that I am a vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the results with complacency. — W. Somerset Maugham

A sensible person does not read a novel as a task. He reads it as a diversion. He is prepared to interest himself in the characters and is concerned to see how they act in given circumstances, and what happens to them; he sympathizes with their troubles and is gladdened by their joys; he puts himself in their place and, to an extent, lives their lives. Their view of life, their attitude to the great subjects of human speculation, whether stated in words or shown in action, call forth in him a reaction of surprise, of pleasure or of indignation. But he knows instinctively where his interest lies and he follows it as surely as a hound follows the scent of a fox. Sometimes, through the author's failure, he loses the scent. Then he flounders about till he finds it again. He skips. — W. Somerset Maugham

The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness. — W. Somerset Maugham

Philip came gradually to know the people he was to live with, and by fragments of conversation, some of it not meant for his ears, learned a good deal both about himself and about his dead parents. Philip's father had been much younger than the Vicar of Blackstable. After — William Somerset Maugham

The humour of Dostoievsky is the humour of a barloafer who ties a kettle to a dog's tail. — W. Somerset Maugham

We Americans ... like change. It is at once our weakness and our strength. — W. Somerset Maugham

They threw this eager vitality of theirs into a vehement striving after the ineffable. — W. Somerset Maugham

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. — W. Somerset Maugham

The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice — W. Somerset Maugham

Heaven knows, I'm the easiest woman in the world to get on with, but I will not be bullied by any man. After all, I have my self-respect to think of. — W. Somerset Maugham

They don't want clever men; clever men have ideas, and ideas cause trouble; they want men who have charm and tact and who can be counted on never to make a blunder. — W. Somerset Maugham

Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking. — W. Somerset Maugham

The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones. — W. Somerset Maugham

What mean and cruel things men do for the love of God. — W. Somerset Maugham

Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house. — W. Somerset Maugham

They're like little boys, men. Sometimes of course they're rather naughty and you have to pretend to be angry with them. They attach so much importance to such entirely unimportant things that it's really touching. And they're so helpless. Have you never nursed a man when he's ill? It wrings your heart. It's just like a dog or a horse. They haven't got the sense to come in out of the rain, poor darlings. They have all the charming qualities that accompany general incompetence. They're sweet and good and silly, and tiresome and selfish. You can't help liking them, they're so ingenuous, and so simple. They have no complexity or finesse. I think they're sweet, but it's absurd to take them seriously. — W. Somerset Maugham

The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger. — W. Somerset Maugham

You know, I don't believe in churches and parsons and all that," she said, "but I believe in God, and I don't believe He minds much about what you do as long as you keep your end up and help a lame dog over a stile when you can. And I think people on the whole are very nice, and I'm sorry for those who aren't. — William Somerset Maugham

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved. — W. Somerset Maugham

If only the good were a little less heavy-footed — W. Somerset Maugham

S the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life ... — W. Somerset Maugham

I don't believe in the god of the Christians who gave his son in order to save mankind. That's a myth. But why should it have arisen if it didn't express some deep-seated intuition in men? I don't know what I believe, because it's instinctive, and how can you describe instinct with words? I have an instinct that the power that rules us, human beings, animals and things, is a dark and cruel power and that everything has to be paid for, a power that demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and that though we may writhe and squirm we have to submit, for the power is ourselves. — W. Somerset Maugham

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. — W. Somerset Maugham

It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him. — W. Somerset Maugham

PORTEOUS: Do you mean to say you were going to steal my car.
TEDDIE: Not exactly. I was only going to bolshevise it, so to speak. — W. Somerset Maugham

Even though he had sacrificed her and cared nothing for her, even though he was callous and unkind, she loved him. — W. Somerset Maugham

Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets. — W. Somerset Maugham

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech. — W. Somerset Maugham

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise. — W. Somerset Maugham

I don't think I shall ever find peace till I make up my mind about things,' he said gravely. He hesitated. 'It's very difficult to put into words. The moment you try you feel embarrassed. You say to yourself: "Who am I that I should bother myself about this, that, and the other? Perhaps it's only because I'm a conceited prig. Wouldn't it be better to follow the beaten track and let what's coming to you come?" And then you think of a fellow who an hour before was full of life and fun,and he's lying dead; it's all so cruel and meaningless. It's hard not to ask yourself what life is all about and whether there's any sense to it or whether it's all a tragic blunder of blind fate. — W. Somerset Maugham

I am, incidentally, the only writer to have received the Somerset Maugham award twice - the first time for my first novel, the second time for my second first novel. — Martin Amis

After all, it's not my fault. I can't force myself to believe. If there is a God after all and he punishes me because I honestly don't believe in Him I can't help it. — W. Somerset Maugham

He began to read at haphazard. He entered upon each system with a little thrill of excitement, expecting to find in each some guide by which he could rule his conduct; he felt himself like a traveller in unknown countries and as he pushed forward the enterprise fascinated him; he read emotionally, as other men read pure literature, and his heart leaped as he discovered in noble words what himself had obscurely felt. — W. Somerset Maugham

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. — W. Somerset Maugham

I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows himself? Heaven knows. I know little enough of myself: I know nothing of others. We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbours. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for them as for himself. — W. Somerset Maugham

Deprecatingly, fully conscious of his audacity in asking so busy a man to waste his time on a neophyte's puny effort, he begged for criticism and guidance. — W. Somerset Maugham

He sat down and played again that piece of Scriabin's that Lydia thought he played so badly, and as he began he had a sudden recollection of that stuffy, smoky cellar to which she had taken him, of those roughs he had made such friends with, and of the Russian woman, gaunt and gipsy-skinned, with her enormous eyes, who had sung those wild, barbaric songs with such a tragic abandon. Through the notes he struck he seemed to hear her raucous, harsh and yet deeply moving voice. Leslie Mason had a sensitive ear. — W. Somerset Maugham

When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character. — W. Somerset Maugham

Why don't you give up drinking?"
"Because I don't choose. It doesn't matter what a man does if he's ready to take the consequences. Well, I'm ready to take the consequences. You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but it's the only thing I've got left now. What do you think life would be to me without it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay. — W. Somerset Maugham

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one. — W. Somerset Maugham

A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, and you can only gain a true knowledge of him by inferences from little actions, of which he is unconscious, and from fleeting expressions, which cross his face unknown to him. Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. But in his book or his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless. His pretentiousness will only expose his vacuity. The lathe painted to look like iron is seen to be but a lathe. No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind. To the acute observer no one can produce the most casual work without disclosing the innermost secrets of the soul. — W. Somerset Maugham

When death stood round the corner, taking lives like a gardener digging up potatoes, it was foolishness to care what dirty things this person or that did with his body. — W. Somerset Maugham

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love. — W. Somerset Maugham

In heaven, when the blessed use the telephone they will say what they have to say and not a word besides. — W. Somerset Maugham

The value of money is that with it we can tell any man to go to the devil. It is the sixth sense which enables you to enjoy the other five. — W. Somerset Maugham

Nature has neither love nor hate, and with indifference smiles upon the light at heart and to the heavy brings a deeper sorrow. — W. Somerset Maugham

Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither. — W. Somerset Maugham

The important thing is character. It's my character I've got to mould. I'm sure one can do anything with oneself if one tries. It's only a matter of will. — W. Somerset Maugham

Mr Harrington was a bore. He exasperated Ashenden, and enraged him; he got on his nerves, and drove him to frenzy. But Ashenden did not dislike him. His self-satisfaction was enormous but so ingenuous that you could not resent it; his conceit was so childlike that you could only smile at it. — W. Somerset Maugham

I ought to have lived in the eighteen hundreds,' he said himself. 'What I want is a patron. I should have published my poems by subscription and dedicated them to a nobleman. I long to compose rhymed couplets upon the poodle of a countess. My soul yearns for the love of chambermaids and the conversation of bishops. — W. Somerset Maugham

I didn't sleep that night. I cried. I wasn't frightened for myself; I was indignant; it was the wickedness of it that broke me. The war came to an end and I went home. I'd always been keen on mechanics, and if there was nothing doing in aviation, I'd intended to get into an automobile factory. I'd been wounded and had to take it easy for a while. Then they wanted me to go to work. I couldn't do the sort of work they wanted me to do. It seemed futile. I'd had a lot of time to think. I kept on asking myself what life was for. After all it was only by luck that I was alive; I wanted to make something of my life, but I didn't know what. I'd never thought much about God. I began to think about Him now. I couldn't understand why there was evil in the world. I knew I was very ignorant; I didn't know anyone I could turn to and I wanted to learn, so I began to read at haphazard. — W. Somerset Maugham

One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul. — W. Somerset Maugham

Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters. — W. Somerset Maugham

Self-sacrifice is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling. It whirls its victim to destruction in the highest affirmation of his personality. The object doesn't matter; it may be worthwhile or it may be worthless. No wine is so intoxicating, no love so shattering, no vice so compelling. When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? At best he can only sacrifice his only begotten son. — W. Somerset Maugham

I have always been a little disconcerted by the passion women have for behaving beautifully at the deathbed of those they love. Sometimes it seems as if they grudge the longevity which postpones their chance of an effective scene. — W. Somerset Maugham

There is a certain elegance in wasting time. Any fool can waste money, but when you waste time you waste what is priceless. — W. Somerset Maugham

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. — W. Somerset Maugham

You cannot write unless you write much. — W. Somerset Maugham

Up to a few years ago nearly all the literature about Oceania was written by papalagi and other outsiders. Our islands were and still are a goldmine for romantic novelists and filmmakers, bar-room journalists and semi-literate tourists, sociologists and Ph.D. students, remittance men and sailing evangelists, UNO experts, and colonial administrators and their well-groomed spouses. Much of this literature ranges from the hilariously romantic through the pseudo-scholarly to the infuriatingly racist; from the noble savage literary school through Margaret Mead and all her comings of age, Somerset Maugham's puritan missionaries/drunks/and saintly whores and James Michener's rascals and golden people, to the stereotyped childlike pagan who needs to be steered to the Light. — Albert Wendt

Like many another member of the gentle sex, she seems to have been ready enough to accept the perquisites of her position, but saw no reason why she should be asked to give anything in return. — W. Somerset Maugham

Her painting was vaporous and unsubstantial, but it had a flowerlike grace and even a certain careless elegance. There — W. Somerset Maugham

The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing. — W. Somerset Maugham

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected. — W. Somerset Maugham

She was a fool and he knew it and because he loved her it had made no difference. — W. Somerset Maugham

Art, unless it leads to right action, is no more than the opium of an intelligentsia. — W. Somerset Maugham

To achieve great success in literature you must have a certain coarseness in your composition... Really to move and influence men you must have complete understanding, and you can only get that if you have in you something of the common clay of humanity. — W. Somerset Maugham

Larry has been absorbed, as he wished, into that tumultuous conglomeration of humanity, distracted by so many conflicting interests, so lost in the world's confusion, so wistful of good, so cocksure on the outside, so diffident within, so kind, so hard, so trustful and so cagey, so mean and so generous, which is the people of the United States. — W. Somerset Maugham

Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination. — W. Somerset Maugham

If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn't be as overpopulated as it is now. — W. Somerset Maugham

To Lucy it was an admirable study, the contrast between the man who threw his whole soul into a certain aim, which he pursued with a savage intensity, knowing that the end was a dreadful, lonely death; and the man who was making up his mind deliberately to gather what was beautiful in life, and to cultivate its graces as though it were a flower garden.
"And the worst of it is that it will all be the same in a hundred years," said Dick. "We shall both be forgotten long before then, you with your strenuousness, and I with my folly."
"And what conclusion do you draw from that?" asked Mrs. Crowley.
"Only that the psychological moment has arrived for a whisky and soda. — W. Somerset Maugham

The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel. — W. Somerset Maugham