W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

354 Sourced Quotes

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
People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

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

W. Somerset Maugham
I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense.

W. Somerset Maugham
Clearly much that seemed valid seemed so only because he had been taught it from earliest youth.

W. Somerset Maugham
It needs a good deal of philosophy not to be mortified by the thought of persons who have voluntarily abandoned everything that for the most of us makes life worth living and are devoid of envy of what they have missed. I have never made up my mind whether they are fools or wise men.

W. Somerset Maugham
The drama is make-believe. It does not deal with truth but with effect.

W. Somerset Maugham
When she liked anyone it was quite natural for her to go to bed with him. She never thought twice about it. It was not vice; it wasn't lasciviousness; it was her nature. She gave herself as naturally as the sun gives heat or the flowers their perfume. It was a pleasure to her and she liked to give pleasure to others.

W. Somerset Maugham
No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention.

W. Somerset Maugham
In religion above all things the only thing of use is an objective truth. The only God that is of use is a being who is personal, supreme and good, and whose existence is as certain as that two and two make four.

W. Somerset Maugham
Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.

W. Somerset Maugham
Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy (conscience) within his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd.

W. Somerset Maugham
Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.

W. Somerset Maugham
By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few.

W. Somerset Maugham
Comedy appeals to the collective mind of the audience and this grows fatigued; while farce appeals to a more robust organ, their collective belly.

W. Somerset Maugham
I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.

W. Somerset Maugham
No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.

W. Somerset Maugham
The inclination to digress is human. But the dramatist must avoid it even more strenuously than the saint must avoid sin, for while sin may be venial, digression is mortal.

W. Somerset Maugham
Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that this is neither innocent or praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium-smoker to his pipe.

W. Somerset Maugham
The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure; indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.

W. Somerset Maugham
There is no more merit in being able to attach a correct description to a picture than in being able to find out what is wrong with a stalled motorcar. In each case it is special knowledge.

W. Somerset Maugham
Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.

W. Somerset Maugham
Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.

W. Somerset Maugham
Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists.

W. Somerset Maugham