W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

354 Sourced Quotes

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

W. Somerset Maugham
I think I was a little disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not realize how motley are the qualities that go to make up a human being. Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by side in the same human heart.

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

W. Somerset Maugham
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.

W. Somerset Maugham
Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.

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

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

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

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

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
When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.

W. Somerset Maugham
I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man nothing but instant flight could save him.

W. Somerset Maugham
Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.

W. Somerset Maugham
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
I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.

W. Somerset Maugham
Poor Henry, he's spending eternity wandering round and round a stately park and the fence is just too high for him to peep over and they're having tea just too far away for him to hear what the countess is saying.
Of Henry James

W. Somerset Maugham
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

W. Somerset Maugham
Of course it was cause and effect, but in the necessity with which follows the other lay all tragedy of life.

W. Somerset Maugham
Women are always glad to listen when you discourse upon love...

W. Somerset Maugham
The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness.

W. Somerset Maugham
It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.

W. Somerset Maugham