Quotes By W. Somerset Maugham

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Writing is the supreme solace.

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 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.

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.

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

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.

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

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.