Top 500 W. Somerset Maugham Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 4 of 10

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

152. “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

153. “His death had been as futile as his life. He died ingloriously, of a stupid disease, failing once more, even at the end, to accomplish anything.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

154. “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

155. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

159. “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

160. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

163. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

167. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

169. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

172. “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

173. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

175. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

177. “Sherry, the civilized drink.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

178. “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

179. “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

180. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

182. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

184. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

187. “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

188. “The audience is a very curious animal. It is shrewd rather than intelligent. Its mental capacity is less than that of its most intellectual members.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

190. “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

191. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

193. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

195. “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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— W. Somerset Maugham