W. Somerset Maugham
There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.Collection: Art
When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?Collection: Atheist
Art, unless it leads to right action, is no more than the opium of an intelligentsia.Collection: Art
You must not pursue a success, but fly from it.Collection: Pursue
When you're eighteen your emotions are violent, but they're not durable.Collection: High School
Success. I don't believe it has any effect on me. For one thing I always expected it.Collection: Work
Genius is talent provided with ideals.Collection: Genius
The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.Collection: God
In religion above all things the only thing of use is an objective truth. The only God that is of use is a being who is personal, supreme and good, and whose existence is as certain as that two and two make four.Collection: Two
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, tooCollection: Rivers
Illusions are like umbrellas - you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound.Collection: Loss
When things are at their worst, I find something always happens.Collection: Entrepreneur
The good traveler has the gift of surprise.Collection: Surprise
Advice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.Collection: Years
I'm afraid you've thought me a bigger fool than I am.Collection: Fool
A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.Collection: Sheep
For men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it an importance which is untrue to life. There are few men to whom it is the most important thing in the world, and they are not the very interesting ones; even women, with whom the subject is of paramount interest, have a contempt for them.Collection: Love Is
Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.Collection: Life
I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.Collection: Taken
But there are people who take salt with their coffee. They say it gives a tang, a savour, which is peculiar and fascinating. In the same way there are certain places, surrounded by a halo of romance, to which the inevitable disillusionment you experience on seeing them gives a singular spice. You had expected something wholly beautiful and you get an impression which is infinitely more complicated than any that beauty can give you. It is the weakness in the character of a great man which may make him less admirable but certainly more interesting. Nothing had prepared me for Honolulu.Collection: Beautiful
I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.Collection: Thinking
He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.Collection: Heart
Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Speaks French
This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom. Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet.Collection: Morning
He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.Collection: Passion
He exulted in the possession of himself once more; he realized how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called love; he had had enough of it; he did not want to be in love anymore if love was that.Collection: Delight
I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas.Collection: Men
By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few.Collection: Actors
It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.Collection: Society
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.Collection: Real
You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.Collection: Christian
It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule.Collection: Country
When she liked anyone it was quite natural for her to go to bed with him. She never thought twice about it. It was not vice; it wasn't lasciviousness; it was her nature. She gave herself as naturally as the sun gives heat or the flowers their perfume. It was a pleasure to her and she liked to give pleasure to others.Collection: Funny
Because a man can write great works he is none the less a man.Collection: Writing
It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.Collection: Government
If truth is a value it is because it is true and not because it is brave to speak it.Collection: Truth
In heaven, when the blessed use the telephone they will say what they have to say and not a word besides.Collection: Blessed
So long as some are strong and some are weak, the weak will be driven to the wall.Collection: Strength
There's nothing the world loves more than a ready-made description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.Collection: Men
A good Havana is one of the best pleasures that I know.Collection: Luxury
Clearly much that seemed valid seemed so only because he had been taught it from earliest youth.Collection: Prejudice
There is no more merit in being able to attach a correct description to a picture than in being able to find out what is wrong with a stalled motorcar. In each case it is special knowledge.Collection: Knowledge
The humorist has a good eye for the humbug; he does not always recognize the saint.Collection: Humor
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.Collection: Truth
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.Collection: Beautiful
As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Heart
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.Collection: Love