W. Somerset Maugham > Quotes

“The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You

“She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“I had no illusions about you,' he said. 'I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and commonplace. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you. It's comic when I think how hard I tried to be amused by the things that amused you and how anxious I was to hide from you that I wasn't ignorant and vulgar and scandal-mongering and stupid. I knew how frightened you were of intelligence and I did everything I could to make you think me as big a fool as the rest of the men you knew. I knew that you'd only married me for convenience. I loved you so much, I didn't care. Most people, as far as I can see, when they're in love with someone and the love isn't returned feel that they have a grievance. They grow angry and bitter. I wasn't like that. I never expected you to love me, I didn't see any reason that you should. I never thought myself very lovable. I was thankful to be allowed to love you and I was enraptured when now and then I thought you were pleased with me or when I noticed in your eyes a gleam of good-humored affection. I tried not to bore you with my love; I knew I couldn't afford to do that and I was always on the lookout for the first sign that you were impatient with my affection. What most husbands expect as a right I was prepared to receive as a favor.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“It’s a very funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“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 ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“What d'you suppose I care if I'm a gentleman or not? If I were a gentleman I shouldn't waste my time with a vulgar slut like you.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“It was one of the queer things of life that you saw a person every day for months and were so intimate with him that you could not imagine existence without him; then separation came, and everything went on in the same way, and the companion who had seemed essential proved unnecessary.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Only a mediocre person is always at his best. ”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge

“Some of us look for the way in opium and some in God, some of us in whisky and some of us in love. It is all the same way and it leads nowhither.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“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, Cakes and Ale or the Skeleton in the Cupboard

“Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?'

The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly.

Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.'

Didn't you mean them?'

At the moment.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“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

“There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life -- their pleasure.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay...”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge

“Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“In the first place it's not true that people improve as you know them better: they don't. That's why one should only have acquaintances and never make friends. An acquaintance shows you only the best of himself, he's considerate and polite, he conceals his defects behind a mask of social convention; but we grow so intimate with him that he throws the mask aside, get to know him so well that he doesn't trouble any longer to pretend; then you'll discover a being of such meanness, of such trivial nature, of such weakness, of such corruption, that you'd be aghast if you didn't realize that that was his nature and it was just as stupid to condemn him as to condemn the wolf because he ravens or the cobra because he strikes.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Christmas Holiday

“The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say "I don't know.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence