The W. Somerset Maugham Collection Quotes

“Why do nice women marry dull men?” “Because intelligent men won’t marry nice women.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“Life is short, but let me live before I die!”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“Celui qui aime a toujours tort.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“whenever you got your way you wished afterwards that you hadn’t.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig-tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all this, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“Character? I should have thought it needed a good deal of character to throw up a career after half an hour’s meditation, because you saw in another way of living a more intense significance. And it required still more character never to regret the sudden step.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“Unconsciously, perhaps, we treasure the power we have over people by their regard for our opinion of them, and we hate those upon whom we have no such influence. I suppose it is the bitterest wound to human pride.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her,” he said, “but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“He was a bad winner and a good loser. Those who think that a man betrays his character nowhere more clearly than when he is playing a game might on this draw subtle inferences. When he had finished I called the waiter to pay for the drinks, and left them.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by side in the same human heart.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thought; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul’s good to do each day two things they disliked:”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“The Prime Minister out of office is seen, too often, to have been but a pompous rhetorician, and the General without an army is but the tame hero of a market town.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“there is nothing like the daily and thorough perusal of a newspaper for dulling a man’s brain.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“But even felicitous marriages cannot last for ever, since if the love does not die the lovers do.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“She had advanced a good deal in the art of life when she realised that pleasure came by surprise, that happiness was a spirit which descended unawares, and seldom when it was sought.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“Living away from the present, in an artificial paradise, Bertha was almost completely happy. She found indifference to the whole world a trusty armour: life was easy without love or hate, hope or despair, without ambition, desire of change, or tumultuous passion. So bloom the flowers; unconscious, uncaring, the bud bursts from the enclosing leaf, and opens to the sunshine, squanders its perfume to the breeze and there is none to see its beauty—and then it dies.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“She found indifference to the whole world a trusty armour: life was easy without love or hate, hope or despair, without ambition, desire of change, or tumultuous passion.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“With a lifetime before her, the length of books was no hindrance, and she started boldly upon the eight volumes of the Decline and Fall, upon the many tomes of St. Simon: and she never hesitated to put them aside after a hundred pages.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“The man who can still dupe himself with illusions has a future not lacking in brightness.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“Time dulls the most exquisite emotions, softens the most heartrending grief.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“People say that suicide requires no courage. Fools! They cannot realise the horror of the needful preparation, the anticipation of the pain, the terrible fear that one may regret when it is too late, when life is ebbing away. And there is the dread of the unknown.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“They say that life is short. To those who look back perhaps it is; but to those who look forward it is long, horribly long—endless.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“Gray warehouses which lined the river, and the factories, announced the commerce of a mighty nation; and the spirit of Charles Dickens gave to the passing scenes a fresh delight. How could they be prosaic when the great master had described them?”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“People who cannot talk are always proud of their dialectic: they want to modify your tritest observations, and even if you suggest that the day is fine insist on arguing it out.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“Nothing is more tedious than to talk with persons who treat your most obvious remarks as startling paradoxes;”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“he is the typical Englishman as he flourishes in the country, upright and honest, healthy, dogmatic, moral—rather stupid.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“blessed are they who mind their own business and hold their tongues!”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

“Death is hideous, but life is always triumphant; the rose and the hyacinth arise from man’s decay; and the dissolution of man is but the signal of other birth: and the world goes on, beautiful and ever new, revelling in its vigour.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The W. Somerset Maugham Collection