W. Somerset Maugham quotes:

In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.

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

There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

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.

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.

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.

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

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

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

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

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

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.

The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.

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.

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.

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.

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.

Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.

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

Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.

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

The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

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

I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.

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

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.

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.

To me he seemed one of those persons destined to failure of whom you wonder what purpose it can ever serve that they should have ben born.

I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.

The tragedy of life is that sometimes we get what we want.

One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.

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.

... how much less is the sense of obligation in thosewho receive favours than in those who grant them." Somerset Maugham

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation."

There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation."

I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart."

With infinite patience she prepared to snare and bind me. She wanted to bring me down to her level; she cared nothing for me, she only wanted me to be hers. She was willing to do everything in the world for me except the one thing I wanted: to leave me alone."

You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

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

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

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

Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.

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

Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.

It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.

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.

Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.

The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.

A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.

How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.

I'm not only my spirit buy my body, and who can decide how much I, my individual self, am conditioned by the accident of my body? Would Byron have been Byron but for his club foot, or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky without his epilepsy?

"Do you like card tricks?" "No, I hate card tricks," I answered. "Well, I`ll just show you this one." He showed me three.

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the center of the world.

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

She [Sadie Thompson] gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer. "You men! You filthy dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!"

The crown of literature is poetry.

Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

No man in his heart is quite so cynical as a well-bred woman.

You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.

We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.

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.

As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.

Refecting on the high divorce rate in America as contrasted with England "American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers

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

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

I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.

We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.

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

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

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

A good Havana is one of the best pleasures that I know.

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.

Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.

In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.

Our natural egoism leads us to judge people by their relations to ourselves. We want them to be certain things to us, and for us that is what they are; because the rest of them is no good to us, we ignore it.

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

Now the answer ... is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.

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 prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool.

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.

Women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.

Marco Polo tells the tale of The Old Man in the Mountains and how he recruits new members to his Band of Assassins by means of drugs, beautiful women, lush gardens, and religious promises. The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.

A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.

There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell you what mutton tastes like. It is enough if he eats a cutlet. But he should do that.

A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.

In religion above all things the only thing of use is an objective truth. The only God that is of use is a being who is personal, supreme and good, and whose existence is as certain as that two and two make four.

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

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.

Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil of the world? If the evils we suffer are the result of sins committed in our past lives, we can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive toward virtue out future lives will be less afflicted.

Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.

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.

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

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.

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.

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

Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.

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

I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.