All W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
- I cannot believe in a God who has neither humor nor common sense. Atheist
- We do not write as we want, but as we can. Beautiful
- Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly… Accept
- Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It… Adultery
- I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for… Ago
- The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing. From
- The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible.… All
- The highest activities of consciousness have their origins in physical occurrences of the brain, just as the loveliest melodies are not too sublime to be… Activities
- For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity. Age
- Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room. Appreciated
- We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us. Beautiful
- I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull. Admitted
- The normal is what you find but rarely. The normal is an ideal. It is a picture that one fabricates of the average characteristics of… All
- Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs. Artificial
- The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim… Aim
- When we come to judge others it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we… Criticism
- In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces. Behavior
- Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation. Community
- In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do. Conduct
- Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man. Bitter
- The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account. Able
- Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination; it is the privilege of the artist that with him it is not as with other men an… Accedes
- 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 can sever. Death
- She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer, made her confident way towards the white cliffs… Breast
- Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe. Advantage