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W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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William Somerset Maugham, CH , better known as W. Somerset Maugham, was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s.Both Maugham's parents died before he was 10, and he was raised by a paternal uncle who was emotionally cold. He did not want to become a lawyer like other men in his family, so he trained and qualified as a physician. The initial run of his first novel Liza of Lambeth sold out so rapidly that he gave up medicine to write full-time.

During the First World War, he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps before being recruited in 1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service, for which he worked in Switzerland and Russia before the October Revolution of 1917. During and after the war, he travelled in India, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and those experiences were reflected in later short stories and novels. Wikipedia  

✵ 25. January 1874 – 16. December 1965   •   Other names Уильям Сомерсет Моэм
W. Somerset Maugham photo
W. Somerset Maugham: 158   quotes 19   likes

W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

“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

Heart

“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

Smile , Travel , Light

“Passion doesn't count the cost. … Passion is destructive.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Razor's Edge

p, 125
The Razor's Edge (1943)

Passion

“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

Love , Life , Soul , Passion

“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

Men , Soul , Forgetting

“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

World , Soul

“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

Time , Reading

“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

Men , Thinking

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

W. Somerset Maugham

Moses Mendelssohn, Briefe über die Empfindungen (1755)
Misattributed

Beauty

“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

Life

“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

Perfection

“Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

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

“Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Quoted in Somerset Maugham (1980) by Ted Morgan

Money

“The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 106

“The crown of literature is poetry.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Matthew Arnold, Count Leo Tolstoi
Misattributed

Literature

“The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Source: A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 13

love , Depressing , For Him , Love

“…the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 51

Future

“She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Source: A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 189

Way , Confidence , Sea

“I reflected, while I chatted with the woman I had been asked to ‘take in’, that civilized man practises a strange ingenuity in wasting on tedious exercises the brief span of his life.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 6, p. 22

Life , Exercises

“It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 68

Universe , Cry

“It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

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

Sense

“[…] the Eternal turned his attention to the three shades who stood humbly and yet hopefully before him. The quick, with so short a time to live, when they talk of themselves, talk too much; but the dead, with eternity before them, are so verbose that only angels could listen to them with civility.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"The judgement seat", p. 314
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

Angels , Time , Dead

“Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 39

Men , Change

“A soul is a troublesome possession, and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Red http://books.google.com/books?id=6ZZgZw5yX8QC&q="a+soul+is+a+troublesome+possession+and+when+man+developed+it+he+lost+the+Garden+of+Eden"&pg=PA413#v=onepage (1921)

Soul

“Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"1896", p. 28
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

Boy

“Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 290

Youth , Age

“The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 41, p. 140

“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

“D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 108

Life , Children , Time