It requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest. — W. Somerset Maugham Feminine Copy Share Image
Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long. — W. Somerset Maugham Age Copy Share Image
If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn't be as overpopulated as it is now. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. — W. Somerset Maugham Books Copy Share Image
From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him. — W. Somerset Maugham Habit Copy Share Image
I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull. — W. Somerset Maugham Author Copy Share Image
I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp. — W. Somerset Maugham Clock Copy Share Image
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it. — W. Somerset Maugham Failure Copy Share Image
“The time has passed when he was an object of ridicule, and it is no longer a mark of eccentricity to defend… — W. Somerset Maugham Ridicule Copy Share Image
“Other men, with no more advantages than he, succeeded, and others again, with many more, failed. It seemed pure chance. The rain… — W. Somerset Maugham Chance Copy Share Image
“MERESTON: But you break my heart. LADY FREDERICK: My dear, men have said that to me ever since I was fifteen, but… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“When all things lasted so short a time and nothing mattered very much, it seemed pitiful that men, attaching an absurd importance… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
I've met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you; it may have other and much more… — W. Somerset Maugham Book Copy Share Image
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment… — W. Somerset Maugham Adultery Copy Share Image
“Culture is not something you put on like a ready-made suit of clothes, but a nourishment you absorb to build up your… — W. Somerset Maugham Culture Copy Share Image
When some incident has shattered the career you’ve mapped out for yourself, a folly, a crime or a misfortune, you mustn’t think… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I take advantage of the fact that the majority… — W. Somerset Maugham Pleasure Copy Share Image
“You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it… — W. Somerset Maugham Art Copy Share Image
“It came upon me little by little. I came to like the life here, with its ease and its leisure, and the… — W. Somerset Maugham Communication Copy Share Image
“I used to think that one day I should write a really great novel, but I've long ceased even to hope for… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“I found something wonderfully satisfying in the notion that you can attain Reality by knowledge. In later ages the sages of India… — W. Somerset Maugham Knowledge Copy Share Image
Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach… — W. Somerset Maugham Adventure Copy Share Image
It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.' — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Never pause unless you have a reason for it, but when you pause, pause as long as you can. — W. Somerset Maugham Intelligence Copy Share Image
It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh. — W. Somerset Maugham Character Copy Share Image
I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's… — W. Somerset Maugham Advice Copy Share Image
We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others. — W. Somerset Maugham Resignation Copy Share Image
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it. — W. Somerset Maugham Advice Copy Share Image
“... how much less is the sense of obligation in those who receive favours than in those who grant them." Somerset Maugham” — W. Somerset Maugham Obligation Copy Share Image
When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? — W. Somerset Maugham Atheism Copy Share Image
It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general… — W. Somerset Maugham Ability Copy Share Image
“It was clear that the will to achieve could not help you and confidence in yourself meant nothing.” — W. Somerset Maugham Confidence Copy Share Image
We Americans... like change. It is at once our weakness and our strength. — W. Somerset Maugham America Copy Share Image
Success. I don't believe it has any effect on me. For one thing I always expected it. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well — W. Somerset Maugham Freedom Copy Share Image
It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred man. — W. Somerset Maugham Communication Copy Share Image
What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected. — W. Somerset Maugham Books Copy Share Image
