110+ W. Somerset Maugham Quotes On And Marriage, Samarra And Satirical

W. Somerset Maugham was a British playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He was one of the most popular writers of his era and his best-known works include Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, and The Razor's Edge. He was known for his clear, crisp writing style and his ability to draw on themes of human nature and relationships. Following is our collection on famous quotes by W. Somerset Maugham on life, love, love and marriage.

Top 10 W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

1. Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
2. We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
3. To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
4. It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
5. The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
6. The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
7. The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
8. There are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort.
9. It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
10. The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.

W. Somerset Maugham Image Quotes

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species. — W. Somerset Maugham

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up. — W. Somerset Maugham

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety. — W. Somerset Maugham

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all. — W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham Short Quotes

• Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
• In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
• The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
• I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
• The crown of literature is poetry.
• When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
• Art for art's sake makes no more sense than gin for gin's sake.
• The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
• Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
• A good Havana is one of the best pleasures that I know.

W. Somerset Maugham Quotes About Life

There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved. — W. Somerset Maugham

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.' — W. Somerset Maugham

How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode. — W. Somerset Maugham

Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation. — W. Somerset Maugham

There are two good things in life -- freedom of thought and freedom of action. — W. Somerset Maugham

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write. — W. Somerset Maugham

Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens. — W. Somerset Maugham

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation. — W. Somerset Maugham

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 me. — W. Somerset Maugham

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature. — W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham Quotes About Love

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species. — W. Somerset Maugham

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up. — W. Somerset Maugham

As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times. — W. Somerset Maugham

The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned. — W. Somerset Maugham

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved. — W. Somerset Maugham

She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man. — W. Somerset Maugham

Women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are. — W. Somerset Maugham

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

A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account. — W. Somerset Maugham

Love is what happens to a man and woman who don't know each other. — W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham Quotes About People

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance. — W. Somerset Maugham

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it. — W. Somerset Maugham

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it. — W. Somerset Maugham

I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them. — W. Somerset Maugham

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise. — W. Somerset Maugham

When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right. — W. Somerset Maugham

A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself. — W. Somerset Maugham

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one. — W. Somerset Maugham

People who ask for your criticism want only praise. — W. Somerset Maugham

I am afraid of people with too much charm. They devour you. In the end you are made a sacrifice to the exercise of their fascinating gift and their insincerity. — W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham Quotes About Writing

Writing is the supreme solace. — W. Somerset Maugham

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences. — W. Somerset Maugham

An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do. — W. Somerset Maugham

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer. — W. Somerset Maugham

A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident. — W. Somerset Maugham

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself. — W. Somerset Maugham

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous. — W. Somerset Maugham

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge. — W. Somerset Maugham

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties. — W. Somerset Maugham

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

W. Somerset Maugham Quotes About Authors

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism. — W. Somerset Maugham

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are. — W. Somerset Maugham

Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experience he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey. — W. Somerset Maugham

I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull. — W. Somerset Maugham

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

No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point; but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess. — W. Somerset Maugham

The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so, and by the manipulation of his plot, he can engage the reader's attention so that he does not perceive the violence that has been done to him. — W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham Quotes About World

One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul. — W. Somerset Maugham

The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones. — W. Somerset Maugham

You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences. — W. Somerset Maugham

It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set. — W. Somerset Maugham

The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress. — W. Somerset Maugham

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror. — W. Somerset Maugham

The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger. — W. Somerset Maugham

You can do anything in this world if you are prepares to take the consequences. — W. Somerset Maugham

Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. — W. Somerset Maugham

I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the center of the world. — W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham Famous Quotes And Sayings

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species. — W. Somerset Maugham

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up. — W. Somerset Maugham

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all. — W. Somerset Maugham

Illusions are like umbrellas - you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound. — W. Somerset Maugham

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me. — W. Somerset Maugham

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. — W. Somerset Maugham

In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time. — W. Somerset Maugham

Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. — W. Somerset Maugham

Thank God, I can look at a sunset now without having to think how to describe it — W. Somerset Maugham

Only a mediocre person is always at his best. — W. Somerset Maugham

It's a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. — W. Somerset Maugham

Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions. — W. Somerset Maugham

Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it. — W. Somerset Maugham

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless. — W. Somerset Maugham

The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now. — W. Somerset Maugham

if you'd ever had a grown-up daughter you'd know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her - well, it's much better to pretend you're the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for. — W. Somerset Maugham

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely. — W. Somerset Maugham

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit. — W. Somerset Maugham

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all. — W. Somerset Maugham

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. — W. Somerset Maugham

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories. — W. Somerset Maugham

The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice — W. Somerset Maugham

It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it. — W. Somerset Maugham

A state of reverie does not avoid reality, it accedes to reality. — W. Somerset Maugham

I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours. — W. Somerset Maugham

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable. — W. Somerset Maugham

It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind. — W. Somerset Maugham

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. — W. Somerset Maugham

Imagination grows by exercise. — W. Somerset Maugham

Tolerance is only another name for indifference. — W. Somerset Maugham

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. — W. Somerset Maugham

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind. — W. Somerset Maugham

It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories. — W. Somerset Maugham

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. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you. — W. Somerset Maugham

There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley. — W. Somerset Maugham

We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others. — W. Somerset Maugham

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

"Do you like card tricks?" "No, I hate card tricks," I answered. "Well, I`ll just show you this one." He showed me three. — W. Somerset Maugham

It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper. — W. Somerset Maugham

A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing. — W. Somerset Maugham

Look after your laundry, and your soul will look after itself. — W. Somerset Maugham

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul. — W. Somerset Maugham

I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present. — W. Somerset Maugham

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it. — W. Somerset Maugham

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it. — W. Somerset Maugham

Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen. — W. Somerset Maugham

If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts. — W. Somerset Maugham

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. — W. Somerset Maugham

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

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 escape from reality, but the means by which he accedes to it. — W. Somerset Maugham

Sherry, the civilized drink. — W. Somerset Maugham

Life Lessons by W. Somerset Maugham

1. W. Somerset Maugham's works emphasize the importance of resilience in the face of adversity, reminding us that we can overcome any challenge with hard work and determination.
2. Maugham's plays also remind us to take responsibility for our own actions and to accept the consequences of our choices.
3. Finally, Maugham's works remind us to live life to the fullest, to appreciate the beauty of the world around us, and to never give up on our dreams.