W. Somerset Maugham Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Life, Book, Reading

• The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Education, Book, Reading

• An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Lying, Book, Writing

• 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, Reading, Eye

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.446, Diversion Books

• 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

  Beautiful, Art, Book

• I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Funny, Book, Reading

• The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Funny, Book, Reading

• But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you; it may have other and much more profound meanings for the critic, but at second-hand they can be of small service to you.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Book, Hands, Profound

• I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Book, Reading, People

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

• What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Brother, Book, Single Life

  "Newsweek" Magazine, May 23, 1960.

• The day broke grey and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Children, Book, Sleep

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.3, Diversion Books

• It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Book, Needs, Astonishing

• Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Book, Reading, Thinking

  W. Somerset Maugham (1941). “the Gentleman in the Parlour”

• People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Book, Writing, Character

• Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that this is neither innocent or praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium-smoker to his pipe.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Running, Book, Men

  W. Somerset Maugham (2009). “Collected Short Stories”, p.11, Random House

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