W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

354 Sourced Quotes

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.

W. Somerset Maugham
There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.

W. Somerset Maugham
It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.

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
Affection is created by habit, community of interests, convenience and the desire of companionship. It is a comfort rather than an exhilaration.

W. Somerset Maugham
A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.

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
All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dependents are very susceptible to slights, and, when they are not treated as they think they should be, will by well-directed shafts, constantly repeated, poison the minds of their patrons against those who have provoked their animosity. It is well to keep in with them.

W. Somerset Maugham
It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.

W. Somerset Maugham
I am afraid of people with too much charm. They devour you. In the end you are made a sacrifice to the exercise of their fascinating gift and their insincerity.

W. Somerset Maugham
No man in his heart is quite so cynical as a well-bred woman.

W. Somerset Maugham
What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.

W. Somerset Maugham
An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.

W. Somerset Maugham
A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.

W. Somerset Maugham
The audience is a very curious animal. It is shrewd rather than intelligent. Its mental capacity is less than that of its most intellectual members.

W. Somerset Maugham
Because a man can write great works he is none the less a man.

W. Somerset Maugham
So long as some are strong and some are weak, the weak will be driven to the wall.

W. Somerset Maugham
Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one can't afford to waste a minute; and just think how much you waste, for instance, in walking from place to place instead of going by bus and in going by bus instead of by taxi.

W. Somerset Maugham
The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.

W. Somerset Maugham
There's nothing the world loves more than a ready-made description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.

W. Somerset Maugham
It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.

W. Somerset Maugham
The medical profession is the only one which a man may enter at any age with some chance of making a living.

W. Somerset Maugham
A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

W. Somerset Maugham
If truth is a value it is because it is true and not because it is brave to speak it.

W. Somerset Maugham
The arguments for immortality, weak when you take them one by one, are no more cogent when you take them together... For my part, I cannot see how consciousness can persist when its physical basis has been destroyed, and I am too sure of the interconnection of my body and my mind to think that any survival of my my consciousness apart from my body would be in any sense a survival of myself.

W. Somerset Maugham
I'm only twenty-five. If I've made a mistake I have time to correct it.

W. Somerset Maugham
It takes two to make a love affair and a mans meat is too often a woman's poison.

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
Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.

W. Somerset Maugham
When a man's in love, he at once makes a pedestal of the Ten Commandments and stands on the top of them with his arms akimbo. When a woman's in love she doesn't care two straws for Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not.

W. Somerset Maugham