Quotes By 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.

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

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

We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.

It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

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

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.

It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.

Writing is the supreme solace.

Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.

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.

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

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.

Have common sense and stick to the point.

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.

In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.

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.

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

The crown of literature is poetry.

A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.

Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

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.

Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.

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

Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.

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 rose: you can smell it and that is all.

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