Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming? — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Thank God, I can look at a sunset now without having to think how to describe it — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Don't think of the past; the only thing that matters is the everlasting present — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
I can only guess that it made the world he went back to...strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
I happen to think we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can… — W. Somerset Maugham 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
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
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 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
You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for nothing but money. We are nothing… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
But I am not sure it would contain any short stories. For the short story is a minor art, and it must… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean… — 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
The arguments for immortality, weak when you take them one by one, are no more cogent when you take them together... For… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
You know, when one's in love,' I said, 'and things go all wrong, one's terribly unhappy and one thinks one won't ever… — 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
