Quotations William Somerset Maugham Quotes

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


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 crown of literature is poetry.


Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.


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.


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


When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.


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


Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.


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


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


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


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.


Only a mediocre person is always at his best.


People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.


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


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


People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.


Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.


We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.


It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.


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.


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


There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.


There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.


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.







When things are at their worst I find something always happens.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic.

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say "I don't know."


It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.

Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.


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


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.


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


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




Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.



I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.


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




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.



It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.

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


Have common sense and stick to the point.


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




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.


If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?


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




Impropriety is the soul of wit.

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.


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.


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




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

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




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

Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.


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


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.


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


Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.


It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.


The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.


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.


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




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

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.


Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.


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 learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.


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


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


Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.


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.




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.

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.


The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.


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.


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




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



Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.



She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.



The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.





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



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.



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





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



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

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


The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.


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


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


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.


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


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


The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.




Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.


It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic.




Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present.

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




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







Tolerance is another word for indifference.





I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.



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.



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

Writing is the supreme solace.


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


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


Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.


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.


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


The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.


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.


You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.