Top 500 W. Somerset Maugham Quotes (2024 Update)

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

Featured in: Quotes About Writing

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

3. “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

4. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Featured in: Broken Heart Quotes, Breakup Quotes

5. “If 50 million people say something foolish, it is still foolish.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

6. “Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

7. “Only a mediocre person is always at his best.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

8. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

9. “Advice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

10. “Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

13. “The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

14. “The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

15. “The tragedy of love is indifference.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

16. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

17. “The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

18. “We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

19. “It wasn’t until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, ‘I don’t know.’”

— W. Somerset Maugham

20. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

21. “It’s no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

22. “Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

24. “There are two good things in life – freedom of thought and freedom of action.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

25. “Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

26. “If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

27. “It was one of the queer things of life that you saw a person every day for months and were so intimate with him that you could not imagine existence without him; then separation came, and everything went on in the same way, and the companion who had seemed essential proved unnecessary.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

28. “To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

29. “Genius is talent provided with ideals.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

31. “She loved three things – a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

32. “Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

33. “But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you; it may have other and much more profound meanings for the critic, but at second-hand they can be of small service to you.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

34. “It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

36. “It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

37. “People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

38. “If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

39. “Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

40. “It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

41. “Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

42. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

43. “You’re beginning to dislike me, aren’t you? Well, dislike me. It doesn’t make any difference to me now.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

44. “Life isn’t long enough for love and art.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

45. “The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

46. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

47. “One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one’s soul.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

48. “The life force is vigorous. The delight that accompanies it counter-balances all the pains and hardships that confront men. It makes life worth living.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

49. “Art, if it is to be reckoned as one of the great values of life, must teach man humility, tolerance, wisdom and magnanimity. The value of art is not beauty, but right action.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

50. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham