W. Somerset Maugham Quotes - Page 15

Quotes about:

• Thank God, I can look at a sunset now without having to think how to describe it

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Sunset, Thinking, Thank God

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

  26 Copy quote

• Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Dignity, Human Bondage, Policemen

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.356, Diversion Books

  7 Copy quote

• You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  People, Laughing, Tolerance

  "The Summing Up". Book by W. Somerset Maugham, 1938.

  5 Copy quote

• Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Inspirational, Stress, Men

  Of Human Bondage ch. 39 (1915)

  4 Copy quote

• The artist produces for the liberation of his soul.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Artist, Soul, Produce

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps it would have been possible to see in him a new Prometheus...the hero who for the good of mankind exposes himself to the agonies of the damned...undaunted by failure, by an unceasing effort of courage holding despair at bay, doggedly persistent in the face of self-doubt, which is the artist's bitterest enemy.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Art, Hero, Self

  5 Copy quote

• The value of money is that with it we can tell any man to go to the devil. It is the sixth sense which enables you to enjoy the other five.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Money, Men, Devil

  4 Copy quote

• One does not really feel much grief at other people's sorrows; one tries, and puts on a melancholy face, thinking oneself brutal for not caring more; but one cannot and it is better, for if one grieved too deeply at other people's tears, life would be unendurable; and every man has sufficient sorrows of his own without taking to heart his neighbour's.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Grief, Heart, Caring

  4 Copy quote

• There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Wisdom, Thinking, History

  4 Copy quote

• The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Fall, Play, Important

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

  7 Copy quote

• Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one can't afford to waste a minute; and just think how much you waste, for instance, in walking from place to place instead of going by bus and in going by bus instead of by taxi.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Money, Thinking, Important

  4 Copy quote

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

  W. Somerset Maugham

  People, Would Be, World

  W. Somerset Maugham (2011). “A Writer's Notebook”, p.15, Random House

  8 Copy quote

• 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 cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Jobs, Fear, Hypocrite

  Cakes and Ale (1930) ch. 1

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Passion, Rooms

  4 Copy quote

• With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Falling In Love, Men, Might

  W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.18, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

• She had no mercy. He looked at her neck and thought how he would like to jab it with the knife he had for his muffin. He knew enough anatomy to make pretty certain of getting the carotid artery. And at the same time he wanted to cover her pale, thin face with kisses.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Kissing, Knives, Muffins

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.403, Diversion Books

  4 Copy quote

• People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Book, Writing, Character

  4 Copy quote

• 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 men, and to find them all in a single man is hardly to be expected.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Character, Men, Average

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

  4 Copy quote

• She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Falling In Love, Husband, Rate

  4 Copy quote

• It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Children, Pain, Artist

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

  4 Copy quote

• We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Beautiful, Country, Aunt

  W. Somerset Maugham (2009). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.292, The Floating Press

  4 Copy quote

• ...I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocracy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing plesures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Christian, War, Night

  W. Somerset Maugham (2008). “The Razor's Edge”, p.226, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Character, Laughing, Make Me Laugh

  W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.104, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

• Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art. ~Waddington

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Beautiful, Art, Perfect

  4 Copy quote

• Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Death, Dying, World

  4 Copy quote

Page 15 of 21

First

← Prev

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin