W. Somerset Maugham
I promised myself that if ever I had some money that I would savor a cigar each day after lunch and dinner. This is the only resolution of my youth that I have kept, and the only realized ambition which has not brought disillusion.Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Men
The officers saluted as she passed and gravely bowed. They walked back across the courtyard and got into their chairs. She saw Waddington light a cigarette. A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.Collection: Men
Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it.Collection: Jobs
The nature of men and women - their essential nature - is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.Collection: Love
The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.Collection: Writing
People who ask for your criticism want only praise.Collection: People
Sherry, the civilized drink.Collection: Wine
Her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.Collection: Suffering
It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.Collection: Character
The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness.Collection: Character
It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him.Collection: Drinking
Art for art's sake makes no more sense than gin for gin's sake.Collection: Art
The Riviera isn't only a sunny place for shady people.Collection: People
It needs a good deal of philosophy not to be mortified by the thought of persons who have voluntarily abandoned everything that for the most of us makes life worth living and are devoid of envy of what they have missed. I have never made up my mind whether they are fools or wise men.Collection: Wise
Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that this is neither innocent or praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium-smoker to his pipe.Collection: Running
Sometimes the road was only a lane, with thick hawthorne hedges, and the green elms overhung it on either side so that when you looked up there was only a strip of blue sky between. And as you rode along in the warm, keen air you had a sensation that the world was standing still and life would last forever. Although you were pedaling with such energy you had a delicious feeling of laziness.Collection: Air
Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.Collection: Men
The artist can within limits make what he likes of his life... It is only the artist, and maybe the criminal, who can make his own.Collection: Artist
The arguments for immortality, weak when you take them one by one, are no more cogent when you take them together... For my part, I cannot see how consciousness can persist when its physical basis has been destroyed, and I am too sure of the interconnection of my body and my mind to think that any survival of my my consciousness apart from my body would be in any sense a survival of myself.Collection: Thinking
D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.Collection: Jobs
Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.Collection: Years
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.Collection: Stupid
Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even to the most prudent men.' Simon gave him a strange, one might even have thought a hostile, look. I should tear it out of my heart as I'd wrench out of my mouth a rotten tooth.Collection: Falling In Love
You will have to learn many tedious things,...which you will forget the moment you have passed your final examination, but in anatomy it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.Collection: Learning
The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.Collection: Philosophy
Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?' The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly. Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.' Didn't you mean them?' At the moment.Collection: Love You
Everyone had some defect, or body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was like a sick house and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed in body, warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor of will, or craving for liquor. At that moment he felt a holy compassion for them all. …The words of the dying God crossed his memory: Forgive them, for they know not what they do.Collection: Memories
Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.Collection: Art
Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.Collection: Men
The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were: Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.' My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said. My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent.Collection: Good Night
"Do you like card tricks?" "No, I hate card tricks," I answered. "Well, I`ll just show you this one." He showed me three.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Way
The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes...Collection: Steps
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.Collection: Sarcastic
What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?Collection: Heart
We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.Collection: Judging
You can never know enough about your charactersCollection: Character
It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.Collection: Eye
Evil is a necessary part of the order of the universe.Collection: Order
When a man's in love, he at once makes a pedestal of the Ten Commandments and stands on the top of them with his arms akimbo. When a woman's in love she doesn't care two straws for Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Sadness
It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.Collection: Victory
I was a stray acquaintance whom he had never seem before and would never see again, a wandered for a moment through his monotonous life, and some starved impulse left him to lay bare his soul. I have in this way learned more about men in a night than I could if I had known them for 10 years. If you are interested in human nature, it is one of the greatest pleasures of travel.Collection: Life
There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.Collection: Kindness
From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.Collection: Old Habits
When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.Collection: Mean
If only the good were a little less heavy-footedCollection: Littles
I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.Collection: Morning