Top 500 W. Somerset Maugham Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Have common sense and stick to the point.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

103. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

106. “I’ve always been interested in people, but I’ve never liked them.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

107. “Writing is the supreme solace.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

108. “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

109. “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

110. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

112. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

114. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

116. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

118. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

120. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

123. “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

124. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

126. “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

127. “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

128. “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

129. “Imagination grows by exercise.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

131. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

133. “Life is short, nature is hostile, and man is ridiculous; but oddly enough most misfortunes have their compensations, and with a certain humour and a good deal of horse-sense one can make a fairly good job of what is after all a matter of very small consequence.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

134. “Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven’t any money.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

135. “The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care? Oh, it is dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of your sight, and realize that you would not mind if you never saw her again. The tragedy of love is indifference.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

136. “I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart’s blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

137. “Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

138. “There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

139. “The Riviera isn’t only a sunny place for shady people.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

140. “I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man, nothing but instant flight could save him.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

141. “The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

142. “If a man hasn’t what’s necessary to make a woman love him, it’s his fault, not hers.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

146. “She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer, made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

147. “When you choose your friends, don’t be short-changed by choosing personality over character.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

149. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

150. “Look after your laundry, and your soul will look after itself.”

— W. Somerset Maugham