W. Somerset Maugham

Quotes

• “...He had few illusions, for here are some of the things that life had taught him: "Men hate those whom they have injure...”
• “I do not attachany exaggerated importance to my poetical works. Life isthere to be lived rather than to be written about...”
• “For men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid o...”
• “Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his s...”
• “And the poor lady, so small in her black satin, shrivelled up and sallow, with her funny corkscrew curls, took the littl...”
• “For myself I can say that, having had every good thing that money can buy, an experience like another, I could part with...”
• “But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffere...”
• “Larry has been absorbed, as he wished, into that tumultuous conglomeration of humanity, distracted by so many conflictin...”
• “A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, but in his ...”
• “I am willing to take life as a game of chess in which the first rules are not open to discussion. No one asks why the kn...”
• “Perhaps her faults and follies, the unhappiness she had suffered, were not entirely vain if she could follow the path th...”
• “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 chan...”
• “Yet magic is no more the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love, and imagin...”
• “How silly men were! Their part in procreation was so unimportant; it was the woman who carried the child through long mo...”
• “I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a lia...”
• “Every year hundreds of books, many of considerable merit, pass unnoticed. Each one has taken the author months to write,...”
• “Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has br...”
• “You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead fa...”
• “A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless...”
• “It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for t...”
• “Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm...”
• “Life is short, nature is hostile, and man is ridiculous; but oddly enough most misfortunes have their compensations, and...”
• “We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbors. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he...”
• “She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and...”
• “I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought th...”
• “The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to...”
• “Irony is a gift of the gods, the most subtle of all the modes of speech. It is an armour and a weapon; it is a philosoph...”
• “He was not crying for the pain they had caused him, nor for the humiliation he had suffered when they looked at his foot...”
• “The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous on the cont...”
• “He could breathe more freely in a lighter air. He was responsible only to himself for the things he did. Freedom! He was...”
• “I've been quite happy. Look, here are my proofs. Remember that I am indifferent to discomforts which would harass other ...”
• “She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.”Waddington, smiling, tran...”
• “Philip looked at his own work. How could you tell whether there was anything in it or whether you were wasting your time...”
• “I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them....”
• “She gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into...”
• “I've got no mother, no wife, no kids. I had, but my mother's dead, and I lost my wife and my kids when I had my trouble....”
• “It looked as though you did not act in a certain way because you thought in a certain way, but rather you thought in a c...”
• “I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart’s blood into it, and then...”
• “I don’t see why the things we believe absolutely now shouldn’t be just as wrong as what they believed in the past.’‘Neit...”
• “Schools are made for the average. The holes are all round, and whatever shape the pegs are they must wedge in somehow. O...”
• “Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom and the ironical thing a...”
• “I do not like these painted faces that look all alike; and I think women are foolish to dull their expression and obscur...”
• “It was like making a blunder at a party; there was nothing to do about it, it was dreadfully mortifying, but it showed a...”
• “She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human hear...”
• “Mrs. MacAndrew shared the common opinion of her sex that a man is always a brute to leave a woman who is attached to him...”
• “Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's t...”
• “Beauty is an ecstasy it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a...”
• “When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for dominat...”
• “The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, ...”
• “I do not believe that I am a vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to ob...”