W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

We do not write as we want but as we can.

There is only one thing about which I am certain and this is that there is very little about which ...

I walked with my eyes on the path, but out of the corners of them I saw a man hiding behind an olive...

Never pause unless you have a reason for it, but when you pause, pause as long as you can.

It’s hard not to be impatient with the absurdity of the young; they tell us that two and two make fo...

I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows t...

She gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous...

For myself I can say that, having had every good thing that money can buy, an experience like anothe...

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

The silence was enchanting. Infinite space seemed to enter it, and my spirit, alone with the stars, ...

You cannot write unless you write much.

When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnip...

The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his l...

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

Larry has been absorbed, as he wished, into that tumultuous conglomeration of humanity, distracted b...

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

But that wasn't the chief thing that bothered me: I couldn't reconcile myself with that preoccupatio...

The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.

The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his l...

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re ...

Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Parnell and Kitty O'S...

I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart’s blo...

I used to listen to the monks repeating the Lord's Prayer; I wondered how they could continue to pra...

I only wanted to suggest to you that self-sacrifice is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even...

Larry sat with his arm stretched out along the top of the front seat. His shirt cuff was pulled back...

Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?'The corners of his mouth dr...

If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.

She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are...

She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.”Waddi...

How strange was the relation between parents and children! When they were small the parents doted on...

How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pl...

Everything passed, and what trace of its passage remained? It seemed to Kitty that they were all, th...

They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been ...

How silly men were! Their part in procreation was so unimportant; it was the woman who carried the c...

Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is ...

It was like making a blunder at a party; there was nothing to do about it, it was dreadfully mortify...

One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.

I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan't make the mistakes I've made. When I ...

Supposing there is no life everlasting. Think what it means if death is really the end of all things...

She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even ...

I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit,...

A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was ...

I respect him. He has brains and character; and that, I may tell you, is a very unusual combination.

Perhaps her faults and follies, the unhappiness she had suffered, were not entirely vain if she coul...

I had no illusions about you,' he said. 'I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I...

She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was ...

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

Life is short, nature is hostile, and man is ridiculous; but oddly enough most misfortunes have thei...

He had violent passions, and on occasion desire seized his body so that he was driven to an orgy of ...

Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven't any money.

A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to...

Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, th...

Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in ...

Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to per...

Of course a miracle may happen, and you may be a great painter, but you must confess the chances are...

To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singul...

For men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes place among the other affairs of the day, and...

I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it...

I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I sh...

Character? I should have thought it needed a good deal of character to throw up a career after half ...

When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she ha...

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

Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can bea...

I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain su...

Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies w...

Yet magic is no more the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Wi...

Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and wo...

You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action.

I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I take advantage of the fact that...

They will notdisappoint you, and you will look upon them morecharitably. Men seek but one thing in l...

I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know th...

I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and over again,' said Phillip. 'That's only a lab...

His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company for some time h...

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at...

It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling ...

There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood. I have nothin...

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.

Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know t...

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know the...

Benevolence is often very peremptory.

He was not crying for the pain they had caused him, nor for the humiliation he had suffered when the...

He could breathe more freely in a lighter air. He was responsible only to himself for the things he ...

But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhapp...

It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than man...

I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.

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

I'm one of the few persons I ever met who are able to learn from experience.

You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a little...

The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were:Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. ...

You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upo...

Monsieur Foinet got up and made as if to go, but he changed his mind, and, stopping, put his hand on...

Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly t...

Philip thought that in throwing over the desire for happiness he was casting aside the last of his i...

He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; b...

His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company for some time h...

What d'you suppose I care if I'm a gentleman or not? If I were a gentleman I shouldn't waste my time...

He thought to himself that there could be no greater torture in the world than at the same time to l...

Schools are made for the average. The holes are all round, and whatever shape the pegs are they must...