Quotes by Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on age and aging   

"The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth."

Maugham, W. Somerset on age and aging
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"Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long."

Maugham, W. Somerset on age and aging   

"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."

Maugham, W. Somerset on age and aging   

"When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long."

Maugham, W. Somerset on age and aging   

"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."

Maugham, W. Somerset on effort   

"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."

Maugham, W. Somerset on evil   

"Only a mediocre person is always at his best."

Maugham, W. Somerset on excellence   

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on excess   

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on expectation
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"It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved."

Maugham, W. Somerset on fame
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"For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life."

Maugham, W. Somerset on fiction   

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on freedom   

"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."

Maugham, W. Somerset on freedom
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"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."

Maugham, W. Somerset on freedom   

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on friends and friendship   

"The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now."

Maugham, W. Somerset on the future   

"From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture."

Maugham, W. Somerset on generations   

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on habit   

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on humor   

"Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job."

Maugham, W. Somerset on hypocrisy   

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on laughter
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"Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams."

Maugham, W. Somerset on aphorisms and epigrams   

"The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things."

Maugham, W. Somerset on criticism   

"Love is what happens to a man and woman who don't know each other."

Maugham, W. Somerset on love   

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on misfortunes   

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on money   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on mothers   

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on nationalities and nationalism   

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on nature   

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

Maugham, W. Somerset on obstinacy
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This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them."

Maugham, W. Somerset on people   

"Perfection has one grave defect. It is apt to be dull."

Maugham, W. Somerset on perfection
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"Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to find in their butlers."

Maugham, W. Somerset on perfection
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"American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers."

Maugham, W. Somerset on perfection   

"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."

Maugham, W. Somerset on perfection   

"Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs."

Maugham, W. Somerset on association
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"It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public."

Maugham, W. Somerset on politics   

"A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country."

Maugham, W. Somerset on politics   

"If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie."

Maugham, W. Somerset on public opinion