In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to. — 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
Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure. — 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
Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them;… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
He exulted in the possession of himself once more; he realized how much of the delight of the world he had lost… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan't make the mistakes I've made. When I… — 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
“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 must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share
“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 either for himself or for others; there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to protect, an eagerness to do good and to give pleasure--if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share
