W. somerset maugham quotes

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

A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.

Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.'

She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.

A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.

The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care? Oh, it is dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of your sight, and realize that you would not mind if you never saw her again. The tragedy of love is indifference.

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 the hill.

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.

When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.

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.

An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.

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

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.

Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.

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

It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.

I travel because I like to move from place to place, I enjoy the sense of freedom it gives me, it pleases me to be rid of ties, responsibilities, duties, I like the unknown; I meet odd people who amuse me for a moment and sometimes suggest a theme for a composition; I am often tired of myself and I have a notion that by travel I can add to my personality and so change myself a little. I do not bring back from the journey quite the same self that I took

How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.

Imagination grows by exercise.

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.

If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.

Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.

If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

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

The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.

Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.

You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life -- their pleasure.

First, cut out all the wisdom, then cut out all the adjectives.

The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.

Throw yourself into the hurly-burly of life. It doesn't matter how many mistakes you make, what unhappiness you have to undergo. It is all your material ... Don't wait for experience to come to you; go out after experience. Experience is your material.

Look after your laundry, and your soul will look after itself.

Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.

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.

I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.

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

You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They're both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you're ground down by convention. You can't think as you like and you can't act as you like. That's because it's a democratic nation. I expect America's worse.

Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.

I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.

You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.

When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. He was a religious man and he read prayers to the assembled household every morning. But he had crossed out in pencil all the passages that praised God. He said that there was nothing so vulgar as to praise people to their faces and, himself a gentleman, he could not believe that God was so ungentlemanly as to like it.

The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.

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

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

Tolerance is only another name for indifference.

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.

I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan't make the mistakes I've made. When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never had a chance. I'm going to bring up my daughter so that she's free and can stand on her own feet. I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he's willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.

Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.

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

The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.

Now the answer ... is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.

The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.

When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.

The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.

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

Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy (conscience) within his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd.

It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.

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

The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.

There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.

There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?

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.

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband.

When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

There was once a professor of law who said to his students. When you are fighting a case, if you have facts on your side hammer them into the jury, and if you have the law on your side hammer it into the judge. But if you have neither the facts nor the law, asked one of his listeners? Then hammer the hell into the table, answered the professor.

if you'd ever had a grown-up daughter you'd know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her - well, it's much better to pretend you're the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.

The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice

I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it. They have no manners and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public house and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious . They are scum.

Unconsciously, perhaps, we treasure the power we have over people by their regard for our opinion of them, and we hate those upon whom we have no such influence.

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled in them, and each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.

What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.

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

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.

Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.

As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.

The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.

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.

Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.

It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.

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. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.

One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

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.

Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.

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

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.