W S Maugham Quotes & Sayings

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. — W. Somerset Maugham

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories. — W. Somerset Maugham

But if the folly of men made one angry one would pass one's life in a state of chronic ire. — W. Somerset Maugham

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. — W. Somerset Maugham

I'm a Russian and all I know of Russia is what I've read. I yearn for the broad fields of golden corn and the forests of silver beech that I've read of in books and though I try and try, I can't see them with my mind's eye. I know Moscow from what I've seen of it at the cinema. I sometimes rack my brain to picture to myself a Russian village, the straggling village of log houses with their thatched roofs that you read about in Chekov, and it's no good, I know that what I see isn't that at all. I'm a Russian and I speak my native language worse than I speak English and French. When I read Tolstoi and Dostoievsky it is easier for me to read them in a translation. I'm just as much a foreigner to my own people as I am to the English and French. You who've got a home and a country, people who love you, people whose ways are your ways, whom you understand without knowing them - how can you tell what it is to belong nowhere? — W. Somerset Maugham

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 — W. Somerset Maugham

A character in a writer's head, unwritten,remains a possession; his thoughts recur to it constantly, and while his imagination gradually enriches it, he enjoys the singular pleasure of feeling that there, in his mind, someone is living a varied and tremulous life, obedient to his fancies. - W.Somerset Maugham — Chandana Roy

When I came back from France they all wanted me to go to college. I couldn't. After what I'd been through I felt I couldn't go back to school. I learnt nothing at my prep school anyway. I felt I couldn't enter into a freshman's life. They wouldn't have liked me. I didn't want to act a part I didn't feel. And I didn't think the instructors would teach me the sort of things I wanted to know. — W. Somerset Maugham

The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were:
Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.'
My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said.
My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent. — W. Somerset Maugham

There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved. — 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

By the time they reached Calais he was in tearing spirits. Once on board he had a small Scotch and pacing the deck watched with satisfaction the waves that Britannia traditionally rules. It was grand to see the white cliffs of Dover. He gave a sigh of relief when he stepped on the stubborn English soil. He felt as though he had been away for ages. It was a treat to hear the voices of the English porters, and he laughed at the threatening uncouthness of the English customs officials who treated you as though you were a confirmed criminal. In another two hours he would be home again. That's what his father always said: "There's only one thing I like better than getting out of England, and that's getting back to it." Already — W. Somerset Maugham

He was occupied with the forming of a pattern out of the manifold chaos of life, and the materials with which he worked seemed to make preoccupation with pigments and words very trivial. Lawson had served his turn. Philip's friendship with him had been a motive in the design he was elaborating: it was merely sentimental to ignore the fact that the painter was of no further interest to him. — W. Somerset Maugham

Women's hearts are like old china, none the worse for a break or two. — W. Somerset Maugham

I had not then acquired the technique that I flatter myself now enables me to deal competently with the works of modern artist. If this were the place I could write a very neat little guide to enable the amateur of pictures to deal to the satisfaction of their painters with the most diverse manifestations of the creative instinct. There is the intense 'By God!' that acknowledges the power of the ruthless realist, the 'It's so awfully sincere' that covers your embarrassment when you are shown the coloured photograph of an alderman's widow, the low whistle that exhibits your admiration for the post-impressionist, the 'Terribly amusing' that expresses what you feel about the cubist, the 'Oh!' of one who is overcome, the 'Ah!' of him whose breath is taken away. — W. Somerset Maugham

The path to Salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor's edge. — W. Somerset Maugham

It is very difficult to know people and I don't think one can ever really know any but one's own countrymen. For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives' tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them. — W. Somerset Maugham

You know, any man can get any woman he wants if he tries hard enough, there's nothing in that, but once he's got her, only a man who thinks the world of women can get rid of her without humiliating her. — W. Somerset Maugham

On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it, so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment. — W. Somerset Maugham

Nor was Miss Wilkinson the ideal: he had often pictured to himself the great violet eyes and the alabaster skin of some lovely girl, and he had thought of himself burying his face in the rippling masses of her auburn hair. He could not imagine himself burying his face in Miss Wilkinson's hair, it always struck him as a little sticky. — W. Somerset Maugham

C.-C.: Tell me frankly, Kitty, don't you think people make a lot of unnecessary fuss about love?
LADY KITTY: It's the most wonderful thing in the world.
C.-C.: You're incorrigible. Do you really think it was worth sacrificing so much for?
LADY KITTY: My dear Clive, I don't mind telling you that if I had my time over again I should be unfaithful to you, but I should not leave you. — W. Somerset Maugham

She must really love you to distraction."
"It's rather a funny sensation, you know," he answered, wrinkling a perplexed forehead. "I haven't the smallest doubt that if I really left her, definitely, she would commit suicide. Not with any ill-feeling towards me, but quite naturally, because she was unwilling to live without me. It is a curious feeling it gives one to know that. It can't help meaning something to you. — W. Somerset Maugham

Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?'
The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly.
Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.'
Didn't you mean them?'
At the moment. — W. Somerset Maugham

I would sooner read the catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores or Bradshaw's Guide than nothing at all, and indeed I have spent many delightful hours over both these works. — W. Somerset Maugham

Happily men don't realise how stupid they are, or half the world would commit suicide. Knowledge is a will-of-the-wisp, fluttering ever out of the traveller's reach; and a weary journey must be endured before it is even seen. It is only when a man knows a good deal that he discovers how unfathomable is his ignorance. The man who knows nothing is satisfied that there is nothing to know, consequently that he knows everything; and you may more easily persuade him that the moon is made of green cheese than that he is not omniscient. — W. Somerset Maugham

It's a very funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. — W. Somerset Maugham

Character? I should have thought it needed a good deal of character to throw up a career after half an hour's meditation, because you saw in another way of living a more intense significance. And it required still more character never to regret the sudden step.
I wondered if Abraham really had made a hash of life. Is to do what you most want, to live under the conditions that please you, in peace with yourself, to make a hash of life; and is it success to be an eminent surgeon with ten thousand a year and a beautiful wife? I suppose it depends on what meaning you attach to life, the claim which you acknowledge to society, and the claim of the individual. But again I held my tongue, for who am I to argue with a knight? — W. Somerset Maugham

It was difficult for her to preserve that haughty, sullen, and coldly indifferent demeanour that appears to be essential to the mannequin as she sails in with deliberate steps, turns round slowly and, with an air of contempt for the universe equalled only by the camel's, sails out. — W. Somerset Maugham

Of course a miracle may happen, and you may be a great painter, but you must confess the chances are a million to one against it. It'll be an awful sell if at the end you have to acknowledge you've made a hash of it."
"I've got to paint," he repeated.
"Supposing you're never anything more than third-rate, do you think it will have been worth while to give up everything? After all, in any other walk in life it doesn't matter if you're not very good; you can get along quite comfortably if you're just adequate; but it's different with an artist."
"You blasted fool," he said.
"I don't see why, unless it's folly to say the obvious."
"I tell you I've got to paint. I can't help myself. When a man falls into the water it doesn't matter how he swims, well or badly: he's got to get out or else he'll drown. — W. Somerset Maugham

Mrs. Strickland was plainly nervous. "Well, tell us your news," she said. "I saw your husband. I'm afraid he's quite made up his mind not to return." I paused a little. "He wants to paint. — W. Somerset Maugham

If you'd ever had a grown-up daughter you'd know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her - well, it's much better to pretend you're the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for. — W. Somerset Maugham

I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas. — W. Somerset Maugham

How the gods must have chuckled when they added Hope to the evils with which they filled Pandora's box, for they knew very well that this was the cruellest evil of them all, since it is Hope that lures mankind to endure its misery to the end. — W. Somerset Maugham

Life's hell anyway, but if there is any fun to be got out of it, you're only a god-damn fool if you don't get it. — W. Somerset Maugham

One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her. — W. Somerset Maugham

Imagination's an odd thing, it dries up;
[Episode] — W. Somerset Maugham

If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers. — W. Somerset Maugham

He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else. — W. Somerset Maugham

They ascribe omnipotence and omniscience to him and I don't know what else; it seems to me so strange that they never credit him with common-sense or allow him tolerance. If he knew as much about human nature as I do he'd know how weak men are and how little control they have over their passions, he'd know how full of fear they are and how pitiful, he'd know how much goodness there is even in the worst and how much wickedness in the best. If he's capable of feeling he must be capable of remorse, and when he considers what a hash he's made in the creation of human kind can he feel anything but that? The wonder is that he does not make use of his omnipotence to annihilate himself. Perhaps that's just what he has done. — W. Somerset Maugham

I've got no mother, no wife, no kids. I had, but my mother's dead, and I lost my wife and my kids when I had my trouble. Women are bitches. It's hard for a chap to live without any affection in his life. — W. Somerset Maugham

Oh, my dear boy, one mustn't expect gratitude. It's a thing that no one has a right to. After all, you do good because it gives you pleasure. It's the purest form of happiness there is. To expect thanks for it is really asking too much. If you get it, well, it's like a bonus on shares on which you've already received a dividend; it's grand, but you mustn't look upon it as your due.
[The back of beyond] — W. Somerset Maugham

The food doesn't matter. No, up here, in the room. It's so wonderful to shut out the world for a few hours. Rest, peace, silence, solitude. You would think they were luxuries that only the very rich can afford, and yet they cost nothing. Strange that they should be so hard to come by. — W. Somerset Maugham

It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it. — W. Somerset Maugham

They're a funny lot, suicides. I remember one man who couldn't get any work to do and his wife died, so he pawned his clothes and bought a revolver; but he made a mess of it, he only shot out an eye and he got alright. And then, if you please, with an eye gone and a piece of his face blown away, he came to the conclusion that the world wasn't such a bad place after all, and he lived happily ever afterwards. Thing I've always noticed, people don't commit suicide for love, as you'd expect, that's just a fancy of novelists; they commit suicide because they haven't got any money. I wonder why that is."
"I suppose money's more important than love," suggest Philip. — W. Somerset Maugham

I wonder if you're not over-sensitive about your misfortune. Has it ever struck you to thank God for it? As long as you accept it rebelliously it can only cause you shame. But if you looked upon it as a cross that was given you to bear only because your shoulders were strong enough to bear it, a sign of God's favour, then it would be a source of happiness to you instead of misery. — W. Somerset Maugham

The disadvantages and dangers of the author's calling are offset by an advantage so great as to make all its difficulties, disappointments, and maybe hardships, unimportant ... Nothing befalls him that he cannot transmute into a stanza, a song, or a story, and having done this, be rid of it. The artist is the only free man. — W. Somerset Maugham

No married man's ever made up his mind until he's heard what his wife has got to say about it. — W. Somerset Maugham

Some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. — W. Somerset Maugham

Thinking of Cronshaw, Philip remembered the Persian rug which he had given him, telling him that it offered an answer to his question upon the meaning of life; and suddenly the answer occurred to him: he chuckled: now that he had it, it was like one of the puzzles which you worry over till you are shown the solution and then cannot imagine how it could ever have escaped you. The
answer was obvious. Life had no meaning. On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it so, under the influence of other conditions,
there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come notas the climax of creation
but as a physical reaction to the environment.
- Of Human Bondage - — W. Somerset Maugham

And you call yourself an English gentleman,' she exclaimed, savagely.
'No, that's a thing I've never done in all my life. — W. Somerset Maugham

It's only the boring who are bored. — W. Somerset Maugham

A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community. — W. Somerset Maugham

There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood. — W. Somerset Maugham

Perhaps that is the wisdom of life, to tread in your father's steps, and look neither to the right nor to the left. — 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

I don't understand anything. Life is so strange. I feel like some one who's lived all his life by a duck-pond and suddenly is shown the sea. It makes me a little breathless, and yet it fills me with elation. I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm beginning to feel a new courage. I feel like one of those old sailors who set sail for undiscovered seas and I think my soul hankers for the unknown. — W. Somerset Maugham

The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. — W. Somerset Maugham

The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost of unending effort but, with all the forces of gravity against it, a fleeting poise in mid-air, a lovely attitude worthy to be made immortal in a bas-relief, it was lost as soon as it was gained and there remained no more than the memory of an exquisite emotion. So life, lived variously and largely, becomes a work of art only when brought to its beautiful conclusion and is reduced to nothingness in the moment when it arrives at perfection. — W. Somerset Maugham

There was a curious sense of apprehension in her heart. He was certainly very handsome. It would be thrilling to be the wife of the Governor of Bengal and very nice to be grand and have the ADCs [Aide de Camps] running about to do one's bidding — W. Somerset Maugham

Its like reproaching someone who has no ear for music because he's bored at a symphony concert. Is it fair to blame me because you ascribed to me qualities that I hadn't got? I never tried to deceive you by pretending I was anything I wasn't. I was just pretty and gay. You don't ask for a pearl necklace or a sable coat at a booth in a fair; you ask for a tin trumpet and a toy balloon. — 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

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

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

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

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

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. — W. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I found I was able to relieve people not only of pain but of fear. It's strange how many people suffer from it. I don't mean fear of closed spaces and fear of heights, but fear of death and, what's worse, fear of life. Often they're people who seem in the best of health, prosperous, without any worry, and yet they're tortured by it. I've sometimes thought it was the most besetting humour of men, and I asked myself at one time if it was due to some deep animal instinct that man has inherited from that primeval something that first felt the thrill of life. — W. Somerset Maugham

It's a habit, and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke. — W. Somerset Maugham

Monsieur Foinet got up and made as if to go, but he changed his mind, and, stopping, put his hand on Philip's shoulder.
"But if you were going to ask me my advice, I should say: take your courage in both hands and try your luck at something else. It sounds very hard, but let me tell you this: I would give all I have in the world if someone had given me that advice when I was your age and I had taken it."
Philip looked up at him with surprise. The master forced his lips into a smile, but his eyes remained grave and sad.
"It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it's too late. It does not improve the temper."
He gave a little laugh as he said the last words and quickly walked out of the room. — W. Somerset Maugham

Oh, God, send down fire from heaven to consume the blasphemer," said Lawson. "What has nature got to do with it? No one knows what's in nature and what isn't! The world sees nature through the eyes of the artist. Why, for centuries it saw horses jumping a fence with all their legs extended, and by Heaven, sir, they were extended. It saw shadows black until Monet discovered they were colored, and by Heaven, sir, they were black. If we choose to surround objects with a black line, the world will see the black line, and there will be a black line; and if we paint glass red and cows blue, it'll see them red and blue, and, by Heaven, they will be red and blue. — 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

Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part. — W. Somerset Maugham

The Absolute. Reality. You can't say what it is; you can only say what it isn't. It's inexpressible. It's nowhere and everywhere. All things imply and depend upon it. It's not a person, it's not a thing, it's not a cause. It has no qualities. It transcends permanence and change; whole and part, finite and infinite. It is eternal because its completeness and perfection are unrelated to time. It is truth and freedom. — W. Somerset Maugham

It speaks very well for human nature that with the masses of dear friends we have it's only to-day that one of them broke the news to us. — W. Somerset Maugham

It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage — W. Somerset Maugham

I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of. I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It's illimitable. It's such a happy life. There's only one thing like it, when you're up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you. You're intoxicated by the boundless space. — W. Somerset Maugham

I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and, finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment you come in, as it's important, the matter is often more important to him than to you. — W. Somerset Maugham

I wonder if it's ok being a second-rate painter. — W. Somerset Maugham

It is quite as difficult to fit one's practice to one's precepts as to fit one's precepts to one's practice. Most people act in one way and preach in another. When the fact is brought to their notice, they assert that it is their weakness, and that their desire is to act up to their principles. That is pretence. People act according to their inclinations and adopt principles; because these are generally at variance with their inclinations they are ill-at-ease and unstable. But when they force themselves to act up to their principles and suppress their inclinations, there is no hope for them - but in heaven. — W. Somerset Maugham

When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever. — W. Somerset Maugham

They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her. — W. Somerset Maugham

And isn't it wonderful that with those simple objects, with his painter's exquisite sensibility, moved by the charity in his heart, that funny, dear old man should have made something so beautiful that it breaks you? It was as though, unconsciously perhaps, hardly knowing what he was doing, he wanted to show you that if you only have enough love, if you only have enough sympathy, out of pain and distress and unkindness, out of all the evil of the world, you can create beauty. — W. Somerset Maugham

Art for art's sake makes no more sense than gin for gin's sake. — W. Somerset Maugham

When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her. — W. Somerset Maugham

I used to listen to the monks repeating the Lord's Prayer; I wondered how they could continue to pray without misgiving to their heavenly father to give them their daily bread. Do children beseech their earthly father to give them sustenance? They expect him to do it, they neither feel gratitude to him for doing so nor need to, and we have only blame for a man who brings children into the world that he can't or won't provide for. It seemed to me that if an omnipotent creator was not prepared to provide for his creatures with the necessities, material and spiritual, of existence he'd have done better not to create them. — W. Somerset Maugham

Have some whiskey,there's nothing like it for clearing the head. You must expect to be thick-witted if you insist upon drinking beer. — W. Somerset Maugham

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind. — W. Somerset Maugham

I can't afford to let my judgement be clouded by any feeling that I might have for a human being. You are the only person I've ever cared for in the world, Charley. I shan't rest till I know in my bones that if it were necessary to put you against a wall and shoot you with my own hands I could do it without a moment's hesitation and without a moment's regret. — W. Somerset Maugham

A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself. — W. Somerset Maugham