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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

“She was making money. But she could not get over the idea that to earn her living was somewhat undignified, and she was inclined to remind you that she was a lady by birth.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 17, p. 63

Money , Idea , Birth

“The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

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

Learning

“Self-doubt, which is the artist’s bitterest enemy.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 43, p. 153

“There are men who are possessed by an urge so strong to do some particular thing that they can't help themselves, they've got to do it. They're prepared to sacrifice everything to satisfy their yearning.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge (1943)

Men , Strong , Help

“It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 51

“I have been forced to conclude from this that we know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 214

“Of course it was cause and effect, but in the necessity with which follows the other lay all tragedy of life.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 65

Life

“Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Quoted in Conversations with Willie (1978) by Robin Maugham

“It is very natural that clever young men should be rather odious. They are conscious of gifts that they do not know how to use. They are exasperated with the world that will not recognize their merit. They have something to give, and no hand is stretched out to receive it. They are impatient for the fame they regard as their due.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"The voice of the turtle", p. 250
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

Men , World , Nature

“If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"1901", p. 76. Sometimes misquoted as "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing". Sometimes misattributed to Bertrand Russell or Anatole France
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

People , Lie

“The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes…”

W. Somerset Maugham

Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 184

“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 practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 15

Time

“It may be that if I lead the life I've planned for myself it may affect others; the effect may be no greater than the ripple caused by a stone thrown in a pond, but one ripple causes another.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge (1943)

Life

“Men are always the same. Fear makes them cruel.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 55, p. 204

Men , Fear

“Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"1892", p. 1
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

People , World

“Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"1896", p. 17
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

Truth

“I am a little shy of any assumption of moral indignation. There is always in it an element of self-satisfaction which makes it awkward to anyone who has a sense of humour.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 32, p. 116

Sense

“I have not been afraid of excess: excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 48

“Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 53

“There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood…Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 51

Money , Sense

“You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 23

Life , Freedom

“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Strictly Personal, ch. 31 (1941)

Money , Freedom

“He had a bitter pain in his heart, for he knew that she was still a stranger to him and his hungry love was destined ever to remain unsatisfied.”

W. Somerset Maugham

"The pool", p. 127
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

Love , Pain , Heart

“The trouble with our younger authors is that they are all in the sixties.”

W. Somerset Maugham

As quoted in "Sayings of the Week" in The Observer (14 October 1951)

“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

Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 14

Pain , Friendship , People

“There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 54

Thinking , Dead

“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 29

Youth , Time , Happiness

“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

Quoted in Somerset Maugham (1980) by Ted Morgan

Life , World

“She gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer.
"You men! You filthy dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!"”

W. Somerset Maugham

"Sadie Thompson" in Altogether - Rain (1934)

Men

“I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 52

“Now 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

Great Novelists and Their Novels (1948)

World , Anger

“He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 116

Money , People

“Whatever anguish she suffered she concealed. She saw shrewdly that the world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willingly avoids the sight of distress.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 16, p. 61

World , Suffering

“Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 164

Exercises , Imagination

“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 book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 67

Books , Reading , Parting

“He had doubts about the utility of examination on subjects which had been crammed for the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_to_the_test occasion]. He wanted common sense.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

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

Sense

“Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: http://glimmertrain.com/documents/pdfs/MaughamQuote.pdf
Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 50, p. 1??

History