W Somerset Maugham quotes

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

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

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.

The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.

The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

Writing is the supreme solace.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.

Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

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

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.