W. Somerset Maugham Quotes - Page 16

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• 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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• 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

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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”

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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

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• 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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• No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Women, Cost

  W. Somerset Maugham (2011). “A Writer's Notebook”, p.66, Random House

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• The day broke grey and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Children, Book, Sleep

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.3, Diversion Books

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• For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Maturity, Perfect, Age

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

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• The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Rain, Unjust

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.732, Diversion Books

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• It takes two to make a love affair and a mans meat is too often a woman's poison.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Love, Two, Meat

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

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• There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Men, Copernicus, Bears

  "A Writer's Notebook (1901)". Book by W. Somerset Maugham, 1946.

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• Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Dark, Night, Giving

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• But I am not sure it would contain any short stories. For the short story is a minor art, and it must content itself with moving, exciting and amusing the reader. ...I do not think that there is any (short story) that will give the reader that thrill, that rapture, that fruitful energy which great art can produce.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Art, Moving, Thinking

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• 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 get over it. But you'll be astounded to learn what the sea will do.' What do you mean?' she smiled. Well, love isn't a good sailor and it languishes on a sea voyage. You'll be surprised when you have the Atlantic between you and Larry to find how slight the pang is that before you sailed seemed intolerable.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Mean, Thinking, Sea

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• I can only guess that it made the world he went back to...strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he even enjoyed it, it remained utterly remote. I think it had lost sense for him. In his heart was the reflection of a lovely dream that he could never quite recall.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Change, Dream, Memories

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• The end of culture is right living

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Culture, Ends

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• Marco Polo tells the tale of The Old Man in the Mountains and how he recruits new members to his Band of Assassins by means of drugs, beautiful women, lush gardens, and religious promises. The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Beautiful, Religious, Giving Up

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• All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dependents are very susceptible to slights, and, when they are not treated as they think they should be, will by well-directed shafts, constantly repeated, poison the minds of their patrons against those who have provoked their animosity. It is well to keep in with them.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Thinking, Mind, Important

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• The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Looks

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• Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Hero, Talking, People

  "A Writer's Notebook" by W. Somerset Maugham, Country Life Press, (p. 196), 1949.

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• There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Desire, Directors, Artistic

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• The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Beauty, Names, Ideals

  W. Somerset Maugham (1930). “Cakes and Ale”

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• There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell you what mutton tastes like. It is enough if he eats a cutlet. But he should do that.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Sheep, Needs, Able

  W. Somerset Maugham (2011). “A Writer's Notebook”, p.230, Random House

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• I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Thinking, House Of Cards, Iron

  W. Somerset Maugham (2017). “Plays Volume One”, p.171, Random House

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• It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Creativity, Perfection, Creative

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