W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

354 Sourced Quotes

There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.

W. Somerset Maugham
This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom. Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet.

W. Somerset Maugham
People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.

W. Somerset Maugham
The Riviera isn't only a sunny place for shady people.

W. Somerset Maugham
A soul is a troublesome possession, and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.

W. Somerset Maugham
…when you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right…

W. Somerset Maugham
…we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.

W. Somerset Maugham
When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.

W. Somerset Maugham
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos.

W. Somerset Maugham
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.

W. Somerset Maugham
And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.

W. Somerset Maugham
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.

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

W. Somerset Maugham
No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.

W. Somerset Maugham
One does not really feel much grief at other people's sorrows; one tries, and puts on a melancholy face, thinking oneself brutal for not caring more; but one cannot and it is better, for if one grieved too deeply at other people's tears, life would be unendurable; and every man has sufficient sorrows of his own without taking to heart his neighbour's.

W. Somerset Maugham
With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself.

W. Somerset Maugham
If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.

W. Somerset Maugham
For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity.

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.

W. Somerset Maugham
Passion is destructive; if it does not destroy, it dies.

W. Somerset Maugham
A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self-indulgence.

W. Somerset Maugham
D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.

W. Somerset Maugham
Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.

W. Somerset Maugham
There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species.

W. Somerset Maugham
I thought I should be a fool to allow work to interfere with a delight in the passing moment that I might never enjoy again so fully.

W. Somerset Maugham
The nature of men and women - their essential nature - is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.

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 held my breath, for to me there is nothing more awe-inspiring than when a man discovers to you the nakedness of his soul.

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

W. Somerset Maugham