People Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

— W. Somerset Maugham

I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.

— W. Somerset Maugham

The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps…

— W. Somerset Maugham

If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn't be as overpopulated as it is now.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

— W. Somerset Maugham

I am afraid of people with too much charm. They devour you. In the end you are made a sacrifice to the…

— W. Somerset Maugham

The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful…

— W. Somerset Maugham

Almost all the people who’ve had the most effect on me I seem to have met by chance, yet looking back it…

— W. Somerset Maugham

Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.

— W. Somerset Maugham

One does not really feel much grief at other people's sorrows; one tries, and puts on a melancholy face, thinking oneself brutal…

— W. Somerset Maugham

We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound…

— W. Somerset Maugham

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one…

— W. Somerset Maugham

To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give... You will find that people forget the…

— W. Somerset Maugham

Our natural egoism leads us to judge people by their relations to ourselves. We want them to be certain things to us,…

— W. Somerset Maugham

As we grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and unreasonableness of human beings; this indeed is the only…

— W. Somerset Maugham

There are many foolish people in the world and when a man in a rather high position puts on no frills, slaps…

— W. Somerset Maugham

People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force;…

— W. Somerset Maugham

It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for…

— W. Somerset Maugham

The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very…

— W. Somerset Maugham

I travel because I like to move from place to place, I enjoy the sense of freedom it gives me, it pleases…

— W. Somerset Maugham

Everyone had some defect, or body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was…

— W. Somerset Maugham

I think I was a little disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a piece than I do…

— W. Somerset Maugham

But there are people who take salt with their coffee. They say it gives a tang, a savour, which is peculiar and…

— W. Somerset Maugham

When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country.…

— W. Somerset Maugham

As we grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and unreasonableness of human beings; this indeed is the only…

— W. Somerset Maugham

The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.

— W. Somerset Maugham

“Very few people know where to look for happiness; fewer still find it.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

The Riviera isn't only a sunny place for shady people.

— W. Somerset Maugham

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.

— W. Somerset Maugham

When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death…

— W. Somerset Maugham

Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more…

— W. Somerset Maugham

Unconsciously, perhaps, we treasure the power we have over people by their regard for our opinion of them, and we hate those…

— W. Somerset Maugham