It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred man. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell you what mutton tastes like.… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Beauty is also a Gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
A man filled with meat turns his back on the dry bones of political doctrine. Fanatical devotion to the ruling party comes… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dependents are very susceptible to slights,… — W. Somerset Maugham 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 Copy Share Image
You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
We didn't think much in the air corps of a fellow who wangled a cushy job out of his C.O. by buttering… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“A man thinks it quite natural that he should fall out of love with a woman, but it never strikes him for a moment… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, but in his book… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“There is no more merit in having read a thousand books than in having ploughed a thousand fields.” — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“I wanted to live again and again. I was willing to accept every sort of life, no matter what its pain and sorrow; I… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“His love became a prison from which he longed to escape, but he had not the strength merely to open the door-that was all… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
I did not believe him capable of love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
