W. Somerset Maugham
Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.Collection: Determination
Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.Collection: Love
There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.Collection: Writing
One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.Collection: Soul
If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.Collection: Women
From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.Collection: Generations
There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood.Collection: Mean
A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.Collection: People
Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.Collection: Fashion
Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.Collection: Simplicity
Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.Collection: Lonely
It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.Collection: Beautiful
Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.Collection: Art
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.Collection: Love
I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.Collection: Mean
She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.Collection: Wine
Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband.Collection: Husband
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.Collection: Poetry
The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.Collection: Life
What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.Collection: Self
Unconsciously, perhaps, we treasure the power we have over people by their regard for our opinion of them, and we hate those upon whom we have no such influence.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Inspirational
Life isn't long enough for love and art.Collection: Life
You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They're both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you're ground down by convention. You can't think as you like and you can't act as you like. That's because it's a democratic nation. I expect America's worse.Collection: Thinking
Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as wellCollection: Politics
There was once a professor of law who said to his students. When you are fighting a case, if you have facts on your side hammer them into the jury, and if you have the law on your side hammer it into the judge. But if you have neither the facts nor the law, asked one of his listeners? Then hammer the hell into the table, answered the professor.Collection: Fighting
If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.Collection: Writing
The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.Collection: One Day
I prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool.Collection: Selfish
To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give... You will find that people forget the failures of others very quickly.... My last piece of advice is not to let anyone see your mortification, but whatever you fancy people are saying about you to go on with your ordinary life as though nothing unpleasant had happened to you.Collection: Failure
Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.Collection: Long
A man filled with meat turns his back on the dry bones of political doctrine. Fanatical devotion to the ruling party comes more readily from the materially deprived At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.Collection: Party
As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Scum Of The Earth
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.Collection: Funny
An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.Collection: Art
Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.Collection: Swimming
It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.Collection: Too Late
I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.Collection: Regret
You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now.Collection: Dislike Me
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.Collection: Misery
She [Sadie Thompson] gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer. "You men! You filthy dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!"Collection: Dirty
A soul is a troublesome possession, and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.Collection: Men
She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.” Waddington, smiling, translated the question. “She says I’m good.” “As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue,” Kitty mocked.Collection: Beautiful
I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.Collection: Death
Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.Collection: Book
Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists.Collection: Kindness
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.Collection: Lying
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.Collection: Sarcastic