W. Somerset Maugham

You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.

— W. Somerset Maugham

No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clich?s that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood.

— W. Somerset Maugham

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

Lady Hodmarsh and the duchess immediately assumed the clinging affability that persons of rank assume with their inferiors in order to show them that they are not in the least conscious of any difference in station between them.

— W. Somerset Maugham

I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it. They have no manners and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public house and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious . They are scum.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to find in their butlers.

— W. Somerset Maugham

American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

Tolerance is only another name for indifference.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham