W. Somerset Maugham: Trending quotes

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W. Somerset Maugham: 316 quotes19 likes

“The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 185

“You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 67

“…we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 64

“Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 14, p. 54

“The sad Don Quixote of a worthless purpose.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Razor's Edge

p, 125
The Razor's Edge (1943)

“You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.”

W. Somerset Maugham The Circle

The Circle
Plays

“But who can fathom the subtleties of the human heart? Certainly not those who expect from it only decorous sentiments and normal emotions.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 43, p. 154

“It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 157

“She had a very agreeable smile; it did not light up her face suddenly, but seemed rather to suffuse it by degrees with charm. It hesitated for a moment about her lips and then slowly travelled to those great shining eyes of hers and there softly lingered.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"The promise", p. 407
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

“He loved her so passionately he wanted her to be one soul and one body with him; and he was conscious that here, with those deep roots attaching her to the native life, she would always keep something from him.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"The pool", p. 123
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

“I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"Death" in Sheppey, Act III (1933)
Plays

“I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul’s good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 2, p. 11

“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. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 182

“No gray hairs streak my soul, no grandfatherly fondness there! I shake the world with the might of my voice, and walk—handsome, twentytwoyearold.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Vladimir Mayakovsky, The Cloud in Trousers
Misattributed

“I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. … They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 1

“I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 71

“The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Moses Mendelssohn, Briefe über die Empfindungen (1755)
Misattributed

“It was not till quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say: "I don't know."”

W. Somerset Maugham

Source: A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 258

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

W. Somerset Maugham

Thomas Babington Macaulay, On John Dryden (1828)
Misattributed