W. Somerset Maugham Quotes - Page 15

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

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Wisdom, Thinking, History

  4 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

• 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

• 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

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• The drama is make-believe. It does not deal with truth but with effect.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Drama, Believe, Doe

  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

• 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

• 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

• The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure; indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Stars, Shining, Gutters

  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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• ...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

• The life force is vigorous. The delight that accompanies it counter-balances all the pains and hardships that confront men. It makes life worth living.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Life, Pain, Men

  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

• 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 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

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• 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 have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Eye, Vanity, Judging

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

  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

• She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Heart, Men, Merit

  4 Copy quote

• I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Men, Should Have, Gone

  W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.43, Courier Corporation

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• I think I was a little disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not realize how motley are the qualities that go to make up a human being. Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by side in the same human heart.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Heart, Thinking, People

  W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.44, 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

• Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Suicide, Trying, Care

  W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.93, Courier Corporation

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