W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

I myself stand on one side and the rest of the world on the other. There is an abyss between, that no power can cross, a strange barrier more insuperable than a mountain of fire. Husband and wife know nothing of one another. However ardent their passion, however intimate their union, they are never one; they are scarcely more to one another than strangers.

Books can't matter much if their authors themselves don't think they matter.

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.

Jeremy Bentham startled the world many years ago by stating in effect that if the amount of pleasure obtained from each be equal there is nothing to choose between poetry and push-pin. Since few people now know what push-pin is, I may explain that it is a child's game in which one player tries to push his pin across that of another player, and if he succeeds and then is able by pressing down on the two pins with the ball of his thumb to lift them off the table he wins possession of his opponent's pin. [...] The indignant retort to Bentham's statement was that spiritual pleasures are obviously higher than physical pleasures. But who say so? Those who prefer spiritual pleasures. They are in a miserable minority, as they acknowledge when they declare that the gift of aesthetic appreciation is a very rare one. The vast majority of men are, as we know, both by necessity and choice preoccupied with material considerations. Their pleasures are material. They look askance at those who spent their lives in the pursuit of art. That is why they have attached a depreciatory sense to the word aesthete, which means merely one who has a special appreciation of beauty. How are we going to show that they are wrong? How are we going to show that there is something to choose between poetry and push-pin? I surmise that Bentham chose push-pin for its pleasant alliteration with poetry. Let us speak of lawn tennis. It is a popular game which many of us can play with pleasure. It needs skill and jud

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

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

The arguments for immortality, weak when you take them one by one, are no more cogent when you take them together ... For my part, I cannot see how consciousness can persist when its physical basis has been destroyed, and I am too sure of the interconnection of my body and my mind to think that any survival of my my consciousness apart from my body would be in any sense a survival of myself.

It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.

To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the
personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am
willing to excuse a thousand faults.

Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.

When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?

The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.

They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her.

She was a fool and he knew it and because he loved her it had made no difference.

I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense.

The new-born child does not realise that his body is more a part of himself than surrounding objects, and will play with his toes without any feeling that they belong to him more than the rattle by his side; and it is only by degrees, through pain, that he understands the fact of the body. And experiences of the same kind are necessary for the individual to become conscious of himself; but here there is the difference that, although everyone becomes equally conscious of his body as a separate and complete organism, everyone does not become equally conscious of himself as a complete and separate personality.

He felt a queer little pang of bitterness because reality seemed so different from the ideal

No married man's ever made up his mind until he's heard what his wife has got to say about it.

The past was finished; let the dead bury their dead.

Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.

A sensible person does not read a novel as a task. He reads it as a diversion. He is prepared to interest himself in the characters and is concerned to see how they act in given circumstances, and what happens to them; he sympathizes with their troubles and is gladdened by their joys; he puts himself in their place and, to an extent, lives their lives. Their view of life, their attitude to the great subjects of human speculation, whether stated in words or shown in action, call forth in him a reaction of surprise, of pleasure or of indignation. But he knows instinctively where his interest lies and he follows it as surely as a hound follows the scent of a fox. Sometimes, through the author's failure, he loses the scent. Then he flounders about till he finds it again. He skips.

My dear, you used to be quite a dish; now you're quite a tureen.

It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.

The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were:
Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.'
My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said.
My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent.

There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.

The thought of my chief inspector reading The Waste Land filled me with pleasure. Suddenly he pushed a snapshot toward me.

You must not pursue a success, but fly from it.

Human beings filled him with disgust.

It was not for me to leave the world and retire to a cloister, but to live in the world and love the objects of the world, not indeed for themselves, but for the Infinite that is in them.

To achieve great success in literature you must have a certain coarseness in your composition... Really to move and influence men you must have complete understanding, and you can only get that if you have in you something of the common clay of humanity.

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.

Well, Henry, if I were you I wouldn't worry", said the lawyer. "My belief is that your boy's born lucky, and in the long run that's better than to be born clever or rich.

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.

Everything passed, and what trace of its passage remained? It seemed to Kitty that they were all, the human race, like the drops of water in that river and they flowed on, each so close to the other and yet so far apart, a nameless flood, to the sea.

It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.

How ugly most people are! It's a pity they don't try to make up for it by being agreeable.

A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.

The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.

He was the most inconsiderable creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness.

If you'd ever had a grown-up daughter you'd know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her - well, it's much better to pretend you're the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.

I happen to think we've set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.

Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.

Is that what we come into the world for, to hurry to an office, and work hour after hour till night, then hurry home and dine and go to a theatre? Is that how I must spend my youth? Youth lasts so short a time, Bateman. And when I am old, what have I to look forward to? To hurry from my home in the morning to my office and work hour after hour after hour till night, and then hurry home again, and dine and go to a theatre? That may be worthwhile if you make a fortune; I don't know, it depends on your nature; but if you don't, is it worth while then? I want to make more out of my life than that, Bateman.

He put off the faith of his childhood quite simply, like a cloak that he no longer needed. At first life seemed strange and lonely without the belief which, though he never realized it, had been an unfailing support. He felt like a man who has leaned on a stick and finds himself forced suddenly to walk without assistance. It really seemed as though the days were colder and the nights more solitary. But he was upheld by the excitement; it seemed to make life a more thrilling adventure; and in a little while the stick which he had throw aside, the cloak which had fallen from his shoulders, seemed an intolerable burden of which he had been eased.

Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.

He had few illusions, for here are some of the things that life had taught him: Men hate those whom they have injured; men love those whom they have benefited; men naturally avoid their benefactors; men are universally actuated by self-interest; gratitude is a lovely sense of expected benefits; promises are never forgotten by those to whom they are made, usually by those who make them.

The first duty of a woman is to be pretty, the second is to be well-groomed, and the third is never to contradict.

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

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

And what is that going to lead to?"
"The acquisition of knowledge," he smiled.
"It doesn't sound very practical."
"Perhaps it isn't and on the other hand perhaps it is. But it's enormous fun.

Those words, though heaven only knew how often she had heard them, still gave her her thrill. They braced her like a tonic. Life acquired significance. She was about to step from the world of make-believe into the world of reality.

Gray's conversation was composed of cliches. However shopworn, he uttered them with an obvious conviction that he was the first person to think of them. He never went to bed, but hit the hay, where he slept the sleep of the just; if it rained it rained to beat the band and to the very end Paris to him was Gay Paree. But he was so kindly, so unselfish, so upright, so reliable, so unassuming that it was impossible not to like him. I had a real affection for him. He was excited now over their approaching departure.

"Gosh, it'll be great to get into harness again," he said. "I'm feeling my oats already."

"Is it settled then?"

"I haven't signed on the dotted line yet, but it's on ice. The fella I'm going in with was a roommate of mine at college, and he's a good scout, and I'm dead sure he wouldn't hand me a lemon. But as soon as we get to New York I'll fly down to Texas to give the outfit the once-over, and you bet I'll keep my eyes peeled for a nigger in the woodpile before I cough up any of Isabel's dough."

"Gray's a very good businessman, you know," she said.

"I wasn't raised in a barn," he smiled.

Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
~Waddington

The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel.

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

Benevolence is often very peremptory.

[The goal is] "liberation from the bondage of rebirth. According to the Vedantists the self, which they call the atman and we call the soul, is distinct from the body and its senses, distinct from the mind and its intelligence; it is not part of the Absolute, for the Absolute, being infinite, can have no parts but the Absolute itself. It is uncreated; it has existed form eternity and when at least it has cast off the seven veils of ignorance will return to the infinitude from which it came. It is like a drop of water that has arisen from the sea, and in a shower has fallen into a puddle, then drifts into a brook, finds its way into a stream, after that into a river, passing through mountain gorges and wide plains, winding this way and that, obstructed by rocks and fallen trees, till at least it reaches the boundless seas from which it rose."
"But that poor little drop of water, when it has once more become one with the sea, has surely lost its individuality."
Larry grinned.
"You want to taste sugar, you don't want to become sugar. What is individuality but the expression of our egoism? Until the soul has shed the last trace of that it cannot become one with the Absolute."
"You talk very familiarly of the Absolute, Larry, and it's an imposing word. What does it actually signify to you?"
"Reality. You can't say what it is ; you can only say what it isn't. It's inexpressible. The Indians call it Brahman. It's not a person, it's not a thing, it's not a c

His death had been as futile as his life. He died ingloriously, of a stupid disease, failing once more, even at the end, to accomplish anything.

In the midst of life we are in death
one can never tell what may happen.

Her very kindness was cruel because it was founded not on love but on reason ...

I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.

What d'you suppose I care if I'm a gentleman or not? If I were a gentleman I shouldn't waste my time with a vulgar slut like you.

I do not attach
any exaggerated importance to my poetical works. Life is
there to be lived rather than to be written about. My aim
is to search out the manifold experience that it offers,
wringing from each moment what of emotion it presents.
I look upon my writing as a graceful accomplishment
which does not absorb but rather adds pleasure to
existence. And as for posterity - damn posterity.

Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.

She's wonderful. Tell her I've never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you."
Waddington, smiling, translated the question.
"She says I'm good."
"As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue," Kitty mocked.

Culture is not just an ornament; it is the expression of a nation's character, and at the same time it is a powerful instrument to mould character. The end of culture is right living.

What I'm trying to tell you is that there are men who are possessed by an urge so strong to do some particular thing that they can't help themselves, they've got to do it. They're prepared to sacrifice everything to satisfy their yearning.

I cannot believe in a God who has neither humor nor common sense.

In the week I promised myself I should naturally read, for to the habitual reader reading is a drug of which he is the slave; deprive him of printed matter and he grows nervous, moody, and restless; then, like the alcoholic bereft of brandy who will drink shellac or methylated spirit, he will make do with the advertisements of a paper five years old; he will make do with a telephone directory.

Milk is very nice, especially with a drop of brandy in it, but the domestic cow is only too glad to be rid of it. A swollen udder is very uncomfortable

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.

He had not even the self-complacency that enables stupid people to accept their mediocrity with unction; he had on the contrary an engaging modesty.

Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one can't afford to waste a minute; and just think how much you waste, for instance, in walking from place to place instead of going by bus and in going by bus instead of by taxi.

I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.

A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.

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.
I wondered if Abraham really had made a hash of life. Is to do what you most want, to live under the conditions that please you, in peace with yourself, to make a hash of life; and is it success to be an eminent surgeon with ten thousand a year and a beautiful wife? I suppose it depends on what meaning you attach to life, the claim which you acknowledge to society, and the claim of the individual. But again I held my tongue, for who am I to argue with a knight?

Thank god I'm free from all that now", he thought. And yet even as he said it he was not quit sure whether he spoke sincerely. When he was under the influence of passion he had felt a singualr vigour, and his mind has worked with unwonted force. He was more alive, there was an excitement of sheer being, an eager vehemence of soul, which made life now a little dull.

An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life.

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

My dear, I'm a very immoral person," I answered.
"When I'm really fond of anyone, though I deplore his
wrongdoing it doesn't make me less fond of him. You're
not a bad woman in your way and you have every grace
and every charm. I don't enjoy your beauty any the less
because I know how much it owes to the happy combination
of perfect taste and ruthless determination. You only
lack one thing to make you completely enchanting."
She smiled and waited.
"Tenderness.

The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything that anybody else believes, and he has a very lively sustaining faith in he doesn't quite know what.

A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self indulgence.

[Hayward] honestly mistook his sensuality for romantic emotion, his vacillation for artistic temperament, and his idleness for philosophical calm ... He was an idealist.

It is always distressing when outraged morality does not possess the strength of arm to administer direct chastisement on the sinner.

And do you find it more poetic when you don't quite know what it means?

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.

He had thought of love as a rapture which seized one so that all the world seemed spring-like, he had looked forward to an ecstatic happiness; but this was not happiness; it was a hunger of the soul, it was a painful yearning, it was a bitter anguish, he had never known before.

How the gods must have chuckled when they added Hope to the evils with which they filled Pandora's box, for they knew very well that this was the cruellest evil of them all, since it is Hope that lures mankind to endure its misery to the end.

The particular value attached of virginity is a fabrication of the male, due partly to superstition, partly to masculine vanity, and partly, of course, to a disinclination to father someone else's child. Women, I should say, have ascribed importance to it chiefly because the value men place on it, and also from fear of consequences. I think I am right in saying that a man, to satisfy a need as natural as eating his dinner when he is hungry, may have sexual intercourse without any particular feeling for the object of his appetite; whereas with a woman sexual intercourse, without something in the nature, if not of love, at least of sentiment, is merely a tiresome business which she accepts as obligation, or from the wish to give pleasure.

Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up being an artist. They've got nothing to do with one another. You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother – well, it shows they're excellent sons, but it's no excuse for bad work. They're only tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse.

I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

I always found Dickens very coarse. I don't want to read about people who drop their aitches.

I don't ask you to forgive me. I don't ask you to love me as you used to love me. But couldn't we be friends?

She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness; it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.