W. Somerset Maugham Quotes - Page 15

Quotes about:

• With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Falling In Love, Men, Might

  W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.18, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

• We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Beautiful, Country, Aunt

  W. Somerset Maugham (2009). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.292, The Floating Press

  4 Copy quote

• The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure; indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Stars, Shining, Gutters

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Fall, Play, Important

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

  7 Copy quote

• Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Death, Dying, World

  4 Copy quote

• It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Children, Pain, Artist

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

  4 Copy quote

• The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Fashion, Average, Heaven

  W. Somerset Maugham (2008). “The Razor's Edge”, p.43, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• She had no mercy. He looked at her neck and thought how he would like to jab it with the knife he had for his muffin. He knew enough anatomy to make pretty certain of getting the carotid artery. And at the same time he wanted to cover her pale, thin face with kisses.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Kissing, Knives, Muffins

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.403, Diversion Books

  4 Copy quote

• When we come to judge others it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Eye, Vanity, Judging

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

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps it would have been possible to see in him a new Prometheus...the hero who for the good of mankind exposes himself to the agonies of the damned...undaunted by failure, by an unceasing effort of courage holding despair at bay, doggedly persistent in the face of self-doubt, which is the artist's bitterest enemy.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Art, Hero, Self

  5 Copy quote

• There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Wisdom, Thinking, History

  4 Copy quote

• She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Heart, Men, Merit

  4 Copy quote

• 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 practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Jobs, Fear, Hypocrite

  Cakes and Ale (1930) ch. 1

  12 Copy quote

• Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination; it is the privilege of the artist that with him it is not as with other men an escape from reality, but the means by which he accedes to it.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Mean, Reality, Men

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

  10 Copy quote

• She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Falling In Love, Husband, Rate

  4 Copy quote

• Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Art, Passion, Rooms

  4 Copy quote

• The life force is vigorous. The delight that accompanies it counter-balances all the pains and hardships that confront men. It makes life worth living.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Life, Pain, Men

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Would Be, World

  W. Somerset Maugham (2011). “A Writer's Notebook”, p.15, Random House

  8 Copy quote

• One does not really feel much grief at other people's sorrows; one tries, and puts on a melancholy face, thinking oneself brutal for not caring more; but one cannot and it is better, for if one grieved too deeply at other people's tears, life would be unendurable; and every man has sufficient sorrows of his own without taking to heart his neighbour's.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Grief, Heart, Caring

  4 Copy quote

• The normal is what you find but rarely. The normal is an ideal. It is a picture that one fabricates of the average characteristics of men, and to find them all in a single man is hardly to be expected.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Character, Men, Average

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

  4 Copy quote

• No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Women, Cost

  W. Somerset Maugham (2011). “A Writer's Notebook”, p.66, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Maturity, Perfect, Age

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

  7 Copy quote

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

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Rain, Unjust

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.732, Diversion Books

  10 Copy quote

Page 15 of 21

First

← Prev

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin