W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

354 Sourced Quotes

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
If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn't be as overpopulated as it is now.

W. Somerset Maugham
He found himself now in the agreeable situation of being able to do what was best for others and at the same time what was convenient to himself.

W. Somerset Maugham
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.

W. Somerset Maugham
Why did you look at the sunset?' Philip answered with his mouth full: Because I was happy.

W. Somerset Maugham
Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.

W. Somerset Maugham
There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain.

W. Somerset Maugham
…the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.

W. Somerset Maugham
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.

W. Somerset Maugham
She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness; it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.

W. Somerset Maugham
I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

W. Somerset Maugham
He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
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
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
I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.

W. Somerset Maugham
He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.

W. Somerset Maugham
But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the design.

W. Somerset Maugham