Top 500 W. Somerset Maugham Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

102. “Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

103. “Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

105. “Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

106. “Have common sense and stick to the point.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

107. “It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

108. “Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

109. “The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

110. “The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

112. “When a woman loves you she’s not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she’s weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

113. “The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

114. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

117. “As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

119. “Impropriety is the soul of wit.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

120. “The drama is make-believe. It does not deal with truth but with effect.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

121. “Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

122. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

123. “We can none of us step into the same river twice, but the river flows on and the other river we step into is cool and refreshing, too.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

124. “Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

125. “Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

126. “It’s asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. – Of Human Bondage.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

127. “A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

128. “The value of money is that with it we can tell any man to go to the devil. It is the sixth sense which enables you to enjoy the other five.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

129. “Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination; it is the privilege of the artist that with him it is not as with other men an escape from reality, but the means by which he accedes to it.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

130. “You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

131. “I am sick of this way of life. The weariness and sadness of old age make it intolerable. I have walked with death in hand, and death’s own hand is warmer than my own. I don’t wish to live any longer.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

132. “There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

133. “Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

134. “It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

135. “You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

136. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

137. “She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

138. “It takes two to make a love affair and a mans meat is too often a woman’s poison.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

139. “The best style is the style you don’t notice.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

140. “A man ought to work. That’s what he’s here for. That’s how he contributes to the welfare of the community.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

141. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

142. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

143. “The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so, and by the manipulation of his plot, he can engage the reader’s attention so that he does not perceive the violence that has been done to him.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

144. “I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul’s good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

145. “First, cut out all the wisdom, then cut out all the adjectives.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

146. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

147. “It is good to be on your guard against an Englishman who speaks French perfectly; he is very likely to be a card-sharper or an attache in the diplomatic service.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

148. “Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the possibilities of life are shut off.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

149. “Imagination grows by exercise.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

150. “The artist produces for the liberation of his soul.”

— W. Somerset Maugham