Top 500 W. Somerset Maugham Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

152. “Art for art’s sake makes no more sense than gin for gin’s sake.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

153. “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

154. “The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

155. “A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

158. “There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

159. “The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

160. “Sherry, the civilized drink.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

163. “And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

164. “It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled in them, and each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

165. “Love is not always blind and there are few things that cause greater wretchedness than to love with all your heart someone who you know is unworthy of love.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

166. “I’ve met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

167. “It is cruel to discover one’s mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

169. “When things are at their worst, I find something always happens.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

170. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

171. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

174. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

176. “Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

178. “The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

179. “Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

180. “When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?”

— W. Somerset Maugham

181. “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

182. “He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

183. “The inclination to digress is human. But the dramatist must avoid it even more strenuously than the saint must avoid sin, for while sin may be venial, digression is mortal.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

184. “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

185. “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

186. “I’m afraid you’ve thought me a bigger fool than I am.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

187. “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

188. “Illusions are like umbrellas – you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

189. “The good traveler has the gift of surprise.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

190. “Impropriety is the soul of wit.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

191. “Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

192. “To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

193. “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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

194. “In business sharp practice sometimes succeeds, but in art honesty is not only the best but the only policy.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

195. “I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don’t.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

196. “Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

199. “Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

200. “Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.”

— W. Somerset Maugham