I knew that suffering did not enoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things…it made them less than men; and I wrote ferociously that we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Suffering
You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
—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
Topics: Perfection, Americans
I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul’s good to do each day two things they disliked… . It is a precept I have followed scrupulously: for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Discipline
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
Topics: Hypocrisy
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
Topics: Criticism, Critics
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Despair
Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil of the world ? If the evils we suffer are the result of sins committed in our past lives, we can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive toward virtue our future lives will be less afflicted.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Sin
I don’t think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Manners
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.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Friendship
It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writers, Writing
Sincerity in society is like an iron girder in a house of cards.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Sincerity
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.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Night
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by make-believe.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Vanity, Truth
I learnt that men were moved by a savage egoism, that love was only the dirty trick nature played on us to achieve the continuation of the species.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Love
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
Topics: Class
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.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Originality
When you choose your friends, don’t be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Character
We know our friends by their defects rather than their merits.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Friendship, Friends
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
Topics: Explanation, Evil
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Life
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Adventure
By the time a man notices that he is no longer young, his youth has long since left him.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Time Management
Art for art’s sake makes no more sense than gin for gin’s sake.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Art
To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give… You will find that people forget the failures of others very quickly…. My last piece of advice is not to let anyone see your mortification, but whatever you fancy people are saying about you to go on with your ordinary life as though nothing unpleasant had happened to you.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Failure
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
—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
Topics: Dying, Death
Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Determination
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Reading, Literature, Books
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
Topics: Common Sense
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Graham Greene British Novelist
- Dodie Smith British Novelist
- J. B. Priestley British Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
- Andre Gide French Novelist
- Marquis de Sade French Writer
- Christopher Marlowe English Playwright
- Jean-Paul Sartre French Philosopher
- Dorothy L. Sayers English Novelist, Playwright
- Virginia Woolf English Novelist
- Simone de Beauvoir French Philosopher
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