ThursdayMay 21, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
William Somerset Maugham, CH (January 25, 1874 - December 16, 1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He was one of the most popular authors of his era, and reputedly the highest paid of his profession during the 1930s.
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.
I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
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. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.
There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing ones mind.
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches them tolerance.
Tolerance is another word for indifference.
The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.
Genius is talent provided with ideals.
Its funny about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the very best you will very often get it.
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.
Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.
Commonsense and good nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.
There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain.
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
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.
There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about ones means of livelihood.... Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. He was a religious man and he read prayers to the assembled household every morning. But he had crossed out in pencil all the passages that praised God. He said that there was nothing so vulgar as to praise people to their faces and, himself a gentleman, he could not believe that God was so ungentlemanly as to like it.
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.
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! Youre all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!'
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.
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self-indulgence.
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.
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by make-believe.
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
I forget who it was that recommended men for their souls good to do each day two things they disliked.... It is a precept I have followed scrupulously: for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
Love is only the dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
There was once a professor of law who said to his students. When you are fighting a case, if you have facts on your side hammer them into the jury, and if you have the law on your side hammer it into the judge. But if you have neither the facts nor the law, asked one of his listeners? Then hammer the hell into the table, answered the professor.
The tragedy of love is indifference.
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.
People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.
You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
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.
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.
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. Failure makes people cruel and bit
Money is like a sixth sense - and you can't make use of the other five without it.
Perfection - Nothing more than a complete adaptation to the environment; but the environment is constantly changing, so perfection can never be more than transitory.
Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to find in their butlers.
The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, But that they cease to love.
To write simply is as difficult as to be good.
The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty, but goodness.
It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept Anything but the best you very often get it.
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
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.
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.
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
There is nothing but art. Art is living. To attempt to give an object of art life by dwelling on its historical, cultural, or archaeological association is senseless.
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
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.
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
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