W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.

If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.

If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.

You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.

The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.

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.

Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.

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.

No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.

Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.

Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.

The crown of literature is poetry.

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.