Quotes By W. Somerset Maugham

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

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

The crown of literature is poetry.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.

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

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

I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.