W. Somerset Maugham: Trending quotes

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W. Somerset Maugham: 316 quotes19 likes

“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

Source: A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 48

“I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man nothing but instant flight could save him.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"The escape", p. 309
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

“Things don't get any easier by putting them off.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge (1943)

“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

Points of View (1959) Ch. 1

“I held my breath, for to me there is nothing more awe-inspiring than when a man discovers to you the nakedness of his soul.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"The pool", p. 140
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

“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 book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 66

“It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 17, p. 64

“I had not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know how much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in the noble, or how much goodness in the reprobate.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 11, p. 39

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

W. Somerset Maugham The Constant Wife

The Constant Wife (1927)
Plays

“Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.”

W. Somerset Maugham

The Trembling of a Leaf (1921), ch. 3

“I thought I should be a fool to allow work to interfere with a delight in the passing moment that I might never enjoy again so fully.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge (1943)

“It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise…”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 223

“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

"1901", p. 66
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

“She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit…”

W. Somerset Maugham

[1926, August, The Creative Impulse, Harper's Bazar, 41, 0017-7873, Hearst Corp., New York]
Revised with quotation in the 1931 compilation Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular.
Often misattributed to George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde
Short Stories

“Impropriety is the soul of wit.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 4, p. 17

“There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Source: A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 38. Maugham says something similar in The Summing up, Ch 22: "Love was only the dirty trick nature played on us to achieve the continuation of the species"

“At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Unidentified page
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

“He knew that women appreciated neither irony nor sarcasm, but simple jokes and funny stories. He was amply provided with both.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Then and Now

Then and Now : A Novel (1946), p. 136

“I did not then know the besetting sin of woman, the passion to discuss her private affairs with anyone who is willing to listen.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 8, p. 31