W. Somerset Maugham Quotes - Page 18

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• Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Men, Years, Purple

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• I promised myself that if ever I had some money that I would savor a cigar each day after lunch and dinner. This is the only resolution of my youth that I have kept, and the only realized ambition which has not brought disillusion.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Funny, Humorous, Ambition

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• Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even to the most prudent men.' Simon gave him a strange, one might even have thought a hostile, look. I should tear it out of my heart as I'd wrench out of my mouth a rotten tooth.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Falling In Love, Heart, Men

  W. Somerset Maugham (1939). “Christmas Holiday”

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• We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Baby, Long, Eras

  W. Somerset Maugham (2017). “Plays Volume One”, p.278, Random House

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• Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Power, Land, Self Improvement

  Address on Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument, www.dartmouth.edu. June 17, 1825.

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• Some American delusions: 1) That there is no class-consciousness in the country. 2) That American coffee is good. 3) That Americans are business-like. 4) That Americans are highly-sexed and that redheads are more highly sexed than others.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Country, Travel, Coffee

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• And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Wine, Sunset, Rome

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• People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  People, Criticism, Want

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• Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Years, Twenties, Problem

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.264, Diversion Books

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• 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 expressed by notes.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Sublime, Brain, Consciousness

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• A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self indulgence.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Love, Women, Sacrifice

  Circle (1921) act 3

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• 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 is not beauty but goodness.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Character, Personality, Culture

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• 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.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Friendship, Ties, People

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• We didn't think much in the air corps of a fellow who wangled a cushy job out of his C.O. by buttering him up. It was hard for me to believe that God thought much of a man who tried to wangle salvation by fulsome flattery. I should have thought the worship most pleasing to him was to do your best according to your lights.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  God, Jobs, Believe

  W. Somerset Maugham (2008). “The Razor's Edge”, p.275, Random House

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• No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Christian, Soul, Atheism

  "A Writer's Notebook". Book by W. Somerset Maugham, 1949.

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• She was a fool and he knew it and because he loved her it had made no difference.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Differences, Fool, Made

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• The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Done, Dice, Reader

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• Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Song, Dull, Wit

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

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• You will have to learn many tedious things,...which you will forget the moment you have passed your final examination, but in anatomy it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Learning, Finals, Examination

  Of Human Bondage Ch. LIV

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• 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 conceals itself; it has in it a certain diffidence.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Believe, Giving, Desire

  W. Somerset Maugham (2006). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.84, Courier Corporation

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• She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness; it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Greatness, Men, Quality

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• For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Real, Men, Occupy Yourself

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

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• The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were: Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.' My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said. My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Good Night, Amy, Able

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• It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Society, Politics, Politician

  W. Somerset Maugham (2017). “Plays Volume One”, p.161, Random House

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• The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too. [The human element]

  W. Somerset Maugham

  People, Acting, Elements

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