Top 50 W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

Writing is the supreme solace.

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.

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

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

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

The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.

The world in general doesn’t know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.

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.

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

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.

Tolerance is another word for indifference.

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.

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.

Impropriety is the soul of wit.

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.

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

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

The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

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

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

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.

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably… have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.

Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.

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

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

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

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

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