W. Somerset Maugham: Trending quotes (page 6)

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W. Somerset Maugham: 316   quotes 19   likes

“Money is like a sixth sense - and you can't make use of the other five without it.”

W. Somerset Maugham

NY Times Magazine (October 18, 1958)

Money , Sense

“There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 71

Love

“To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Quoted in Somerset Maugham (1980) by Ted Morgan

Time

“I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell… their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 206

Heart

“Sentimentality is only sentiment that rubs you up the wrong way.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"1941"
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

Way

“I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 21, p. 79

Thinking , Past

“After all, 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

Arnold, in The Circle: A Comedy in Three Acts (1921), p. 58-59
Plays

Sex , Home

“…when you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right…”

W. Somerset Maugham

Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 166

People

“It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 122

Victory , Happiness

“You bloody fool, you've killed the wrong man.”

W. Somerset Maugham

The Hairless Mexican (1927)
Short Stories

Fools

“It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Ten Novels and Their Authors

Ten Novels and Their Authors (1954)

Fools

“He found himself now in the agreeable situation of being able to do what was best for others and at the same time what was convenient to himself.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Razor's Edge

p, 125
The Razor's Edge (1943)

Time

“He had doubts about the utility of examination on subjects which had been crammed for the occasion. He wanted common sense.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 10

Sense

“He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague. He was profoundly troubled. He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightning on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 88

Life , Truth , Mountain , Passion

“Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 297

Life , Perfection

“Men seek but one thing in life — their pleasure.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 45

Life , Men , Pleasure

“One of the falsest of proverbs is that you must lie on the bed that you have made. The experience of life shows that people are constantly doing things which must lead to disaster, and yet by some chance manage to evade the result of their folly.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 33, p. 119

Life , People , Lie , Chance

“Both these men are in love with Natasha, Count Rostov's younger daughter, and in her Tolstoy has created the most delightful girl in fiction. Nothing is so difficult as to portray a young girl who is at once charming and interesting. Generally the young girls of fiction are colorless (Amelia in Vanity Fair), priggish (Fanny in Mansfield Park), too clever by half (Constantia Durham in The Egoist), or little geese (Dora in David Copperfield), silly flirts or innocent beyound belief. It is understandable that they should be an awkward subject for the novelist to deal with, for at that tender age the personality is undeveloped. Similarly a painter can only make a face interesting when the vicissitudes of life, thought, love and suffering have given it character. In the portrait of a girl the best he can do is to represent the charm and beauty of youth. But Natasha is entirely natural. She is sweet, sensitive, and sympathetic, willful, childish, womanly already, idealistic, quick-tempered, warm-hearted, headstrong, capricious and in everything enchanting. Tolstoy created many women and they are wonderfully true to life, but never another who wins the affection of the reader as does Natasha.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Leo Tolstoy and War and Peace
Great Novelists and Their Novels

Love , Life , Women , Men

“Bob Forestier had pretended for so many years to be a gentleman that in the end, forgetting that it was all a fake, he had found himself driven to act as in that stupid, conventional brain of his he thought a gentleman must act. No longer knowing the difference between sham and real, he had sacrificed his life to a spurious heroism.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"The lion's skin", p. 283
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

Life , Stupidity , Forgetting