1874-1965, British Novelist, Playwright
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom: and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Freedom]
If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Public Opinion]
If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Nationalities and Nationalism]
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who has lost it.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Youth]
It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Fame]
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Suffering]
It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Politicians and Politics]
It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humor.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Humor]
It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Creativity]
It's a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Expectation]
It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Writers and Writing]
Lady Hodmarsh and the duchess immediately assumed the clinging affability that persons of rank assume with their inferiors in order to show them that they are not in the least conscious of any difference in station between them.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Class]
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Obstinacy]
Love is what happens to a man and woman who don't know each other.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Love]
Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Nature]
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Money]
No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Christians and Christianity]
No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichTs that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Books: Bestsellers]
Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Age and Aging]
Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
W. Somerset Maugham – [Age and Aging]
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