Top 100 Maugham's Quotes
#1. It doesn't matter if I'm only to be gone four days, as in this case; I take six months' supply of reading material everywhere. Anyone who needs further explication of this eccentricity can find it usefully set out in the first pages of W. Somerset Maugham's story The Book-Bag.
Robin McKinley
#2. At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester's works and the little urn that contains my mother's ashes.
Wilbur Smith
#3. It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
W. Somerset Maugham
#4. She's wonderful. Tell her I've never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you."
Waddington, smiling, translated the question.
"She says I'm good."
"As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue," Kitty mocked.
W. Somerset Maugham
#5. It is not very comfortable to have the gift of being amused at one's own absurdity. LXXX
W. Somerset Maugham
#6. The important thing is character. It's my character I've got to mould. I'm sure one can do anything with oneself if one tries. It's only a matter of will.
W. Somerset Maugham
#7. I am sick of this way of life. The weariness and sadness of old age make it intolerable. I have walked with death in hand, and death's own hand is warmer than my own. I don't wish to live any longer.
W. Somerset Maugham
#8. No married man's ever made up his mind until he's heard what his wife has got to say about it.
W. Somerset Maugham
#9. 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.
W. Somerset Maugham
#10. It suggests that one can choose one's course by an effort of will. And it suggests that reason is the surest guide. Why should its dictates be any better than those of passion? They're different, that's all.
W. Somerset Maugham
#11. 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.
W. Somerset Maugham
#12. I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes of one's own than by doing the right thing on somebody else's advice.
W. Somerset Maugham
#13. One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.
W. Somerset Maugham
#14. How ugly most people are! It's a pity they don't try to make up for it by being agreeable.
W. Somerset Maugham
#15. 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. Women are bitches. It's hard for a chap to live without any affection in his life.
W. Somerset Maugham
#16. It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
W. Somerset Maugham
#17. She had asked if he was good-looking. 'No, I don't think he is,' answered Margaret, 'but he's very paintable.' 'That is an answer which has the advantage of sounding well and meaning nothing,' smiled Susie. She
W. Somerset Maugham
#19. The extraordinariness of a man's life does not make him extraordinary, but contrariwise if a man is extraordinary he will make extraordinariness out of a life as humdrum as that of a country curate.
W. Somerset Maugham
#20. You know, any man can get any woman he wants if he tries hard enough, there's nothing in that, but once he's got her, only a man who thinks the world of women can get rid of her without humiliating her.
W. Somerset Maugham
#21. D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.
W. Somerset Maugham
#22. The path to Salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor's edge.
W. Somerset Maugham
#24. I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.
W. Somerset Maugham
#25. If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.
W. Somerset Maugham
#26. It's a long, arduous road he's starting to travel, but it may be that at the end of it he'll find what's he's seeking.
W. Somerset Maugham
#27. So now what?'
'Well, if you insist on marrying me ... But it's an awful risk we're taking!'
'Darling, that's what life's for - to take risks.
W. Somerset Maugham
#28. 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. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas.
W. Somerset Maugham
#29. Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man who isn't quite so delightful but a little more sincere.
W. Somerset Maugham
#30. Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part.
W. Somerset Maugham
#31. If there's anything I dislike it's the violin", she answered. "Why one should want to hear anyone scrape the hairs of a horse's tail against the guts of a dead cat is something I shall never understand.
W. Somerset Maugham
#32. Deprecatingly, fully conscious of his audacity in asking so busy a man to waste his time on a neophyte's puny effort, he begged for criticism and guidance.
W. Somerset Maugham
#33. Though I said that affection was the greatest enemy of love, I would never deny that it's a very good substitute. I'm not sure that a marriage founded on it isn't the happiest.
[The book-bag]
W. Somerset Maugham
#34. Culture is not just an ornament; it is the expression of a nation's character, and at the same time it is a powerful instrument to mould character. The end of culture is right living.
W. Somerset Maugham
#35. [T]hat his cheating and his bitterness and his cruelty were the revolt of his will ... against a deep-rooted instinct of holiness, against a desire for God that terrified and yet obsessed him.
W. Somerset Maugham
#36. Perhaps that is the wisdom of life, to tread in your father's steps, and look neither to the right nor to the left.
W. Somerset Maugham
#37. It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him.
W. Somerset Maugham
#38. I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and, finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment you come in, as it's important, the matter is often more important to him than to you.
W. Somerset Maugham
#39. When a man's in love, he at once makes a pedestal of the Ten Commandments and stands on the top of them with his arms akimbo. When a woman's in love she doesn't care two straws for Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not.
W. Somerset Maugham
#40. It was difficult for her to preserve that haughty, sullen, and coldly indifferent demeanour that appears to be essential to the mannequin as she sails in with deliberate steps, turns round slowly and, with an air of contempt for the universe equalled only by the camel's, sails out.
W. Somerset Maugham
#41. 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.
W. Somerset Maugham
#42. I would sooner read the catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores or Bradshaw's Guide than nothing at all, and indeed I have spent many delightful hours over both these works.
W. Somerset Maugham
#43. You poor lonely boy,' she cried, 'it's so dreadful for you to have no parents.'
Well, as my mother was a whore, and my father a drunk, I daresay I don't miss much.
W. Somerset Maugham
#44. It is hard that a man's exterior should tally so little sometimes with his soul.
W. Somerset Maugham
#45. The humour of Dostoievsky is the humour of a barloafer who ties a kettle to a dog's tail.
W. Somerset Maugham
#46. Philip came gradually to know the people he was to live with, and by fragments of conversation, some of it not meant for his ears, learned a good deal both about himself and about his dead parents. Philip's father had been much younger than the Vicar of Blackstable. After
William Somerset Maugham
#47. It takes two to make a love affair and a mans meat is too often a woman's poison.
W. Somerset Maugham
#48. And you dared to go counter to your father's wishes? They should have been a command to you. Give me one reason, only one, why, flinging decency to the winds, you demeaned yourself by becoming a baker.'
'Hunger.
W. Somerset Maugham
#49. And what is that going to lead to?"
"The acquisition of knowledge," he smiled.
"It doesn't sound very practical."
"Perhaps it isn't and on the other hand perhaps it is. But it's enormous fun.
W. Somerset Maugham
#50. Now listen. If I think he's awful we'll just talk about the weather and the crops for a few minutes and then we'll have an ominous pause and stare at him. That always makes a man feel a perfect fool and the moment a man feels a fool he gets up and goes.
W. Somerset Maugham
#51. But if the folly of men made one angry one would pass one's life in a state of chronic ire.
W. Somerset Maugham
#52. Though he had both esteem and admiration for the sensibility of the human race, he had little respect for their intelligence: man has always found it easier to sacrifice his life than to learn the multiplication table.
[Mr Harrington's washing]
W. Somerset Maugham
#53. You must know what life is. One can do no good by shutting one's eyes to everything that doesn't square with a shoddy, false ideal.
W. Somerset Maugham
#54. Unless love is passion, it's not love, but something else; and passion thrives not on satisfaction, but on impediment.
W. Somerset Maugham
#55. There was a curious sense of apprehension in her heart. He was certainly very handsome. It would be thrilling to be the wife of the Governor of Bengal and very nice to be grand and have the ADCs [Aide de Camps] running about to do one's bidding
W. Somerset Maugham
#56. How the gods must have chuckled when they added Hope to the evils with which they filled Pandora's box, for they knew very well that this was the cruellest evil of them all, since it is Hope that lures mankind to endure its misery to the end.
W. Somerset Maugham
#58. It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. - SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Sarah Ban Breathnach
#59. The most insignificant of Strickland's works suggests a personality which is strange, tormented, and complex; and it is this surely which prevents even those who do not like his pictures from being indifferent to them; it is this which has excited so curious an interest in his life and character.
W. Somerset Maugham
#60. A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.
W. Somerset Maugham
#61. I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell ... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
W. Somerset Maugham
#62. It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.
W. Somerset Maugham
#63. I don't know what it is that makes someone love you, but whatever it is, it's the only thing that matters, and if it is not there you won't create it by kindness, or generosity, or anything of that sort.
W. Somerset Maugham
#64. The food doesn't matter. No, up here, in the room. It's so wonderful to shut out the world for a few hours. Rest, peace, silence, solitude. You would think they were luxuries that only the very rich can afford, and yet they cost nothing. Strange that they should be so hard to come by.
W. Somerset Maugham
#65. 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.
W. Somerset Maugham
#66. I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.
W. Somerset Maugham
#67. 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.
W. Somerset Maugham
#68. It speaks very well for human nature that with the masses of dear friends we have it's only to-day that one of them broke the news to us.
W. Somerset Maugham
#69. It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage
W. Somerset Maugham
#70. Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one can't afford to waste a minute; and just think how much you waste, for instance, in walking from place to place instead of going by bus and in going by bus instead of by taxi.
W. Somerset Maugham
#72. No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you.
W. Somerset Maugham
#73. Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.
W. Somerset Maugham
#74. Some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not.
W. Somerset Maugham
#75. Well, Henry, if I were you I wouldn't worry", said the lawyer. "My belief is that your boy's born lucky, and in the long run that's better than to be born clever or rich.
W. Somerset Maugham
#76. A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.
W. Somerset Maugham
#77. After all, it's not my fault. I can't force myself to believe. If there is a God after all and he punishes me because I honestly don't believe in Him I can't help it.
W. Somerset Maugham
#78. 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 an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water.
W. Somerset Maugham
#79. If all else perish, there will remain8 a story-teller's world from Singapore to the Marquesas that is exclusively and forever Maugham, a world of veranda and prahu which we enter, as we do that of Conan Doyle's Baker Street, with a sense of happy and eternal homecoming.
Selina Shirley Hastings
#80. The fact is, I suppose, that it's not enough to have brains. The thing that counts is character.
W. Somerset Maugham
#81. Life's hell anyway, but if there is any fun to be got out of it, you're only a god-damn fool if you don't get it.
W. Somerset Maugham
#82. Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?'
The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly.
Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.'
Didn't you mean them?'
At the moment.
W. Somerset Maugham
#84. Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit of it.
W. Somerset Maugham
#85. Have some whiskey,there's nothing like it for clearing the head. You must expect to be thick-witted if you insist upon drinking beer.
W. Somerset Maugham
#86. What are you to do with a boy who never argues with you, but does exactly what he likes and when you get mad at him just says he's sorry and lets you storm?
William Somerset Maugham
#87. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
W. Somerset Maugham
#88. 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.
W. Somerset Maugham
#89. In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.
W. Somerset Maugham
#90. There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.
W. Somerset Maugham
#91. There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.
W. Somerset Maugham
#93. In order to be a writer, "Maugham continues: "one must take chances and not be afraid to look foolish. I wrote The Razor's Edge while wearing a paper hat ... .
Woody Allen
#94. There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood.
W. Somerset Maugham
#95. And you call yourself an English gentleman,' she exclaimed, savagely.
'No, that's a thing I've never done in all my life.
W. Somerset Maugham
#96. Mrs. Strickland was plainly nervous. "Well, tell us your news," she said. "I saw your husband. I'm afraid he's quite made up his mind not to return." I paused a little. "He wants to paint.
W. Somerset Maugham
#97. I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.
W. Somerset Maugham
#98. She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.
W. Somerset Maugham
#99. When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.
W. Somerset Maugham
#100. One idealizes people when they're away, it's true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and when one sees them again one's often surprised that one saw anything in them at all.
W. Somerset Maugham
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