W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

354 Sourced Quotes

… habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

W. Somerset Maugham
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down hill. It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.

W. Somerset Maugham
There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.

W. Somerset Maugham
Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.

W. Somerset Maugham
She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.

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

W. Somerset Maugham
[...] the Eternal turned his attention to the three shades who stood humbly and yet hopefully before him. The quick, with so short a time to live, when they talk of themselves, talk too much; but the dead, with eternity before them, are so verbose that only angels could listen to them with civility.

W. Somerset Maugham
If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.

W. Somerset Maugham
In art honesty is not only the best but the only policy.

W. Somerset Maugham
The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.

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

W. Somerset Maugham
Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

W. Somerset Maugham
Passion doesn't count the cost. … Passion is destructive.

W. Somerset Maugham
Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even to the most prudent men.' Simon gave him a strange, one might even have thought a hostile, look. I should tear it out of my heart as I'd wrench out of my mouth a rotten tooth.

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

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

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 know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

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
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