W. Somerset Maugham quotes - page 4

Life isn't long enough for love and art. (W. Somerset Maugham)
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
The crown of literature is poetry. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. (W. Somerset Maugham)
It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments it is a whole-time job. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
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 into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
Don't you know? Because American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
There are men who are possessed by an urge so strong to do some particular thing that they can't help themselves, they've got to do it. They're prepared to sacrifice everything to satisfy their yearning. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist. (W. Somerset Maugham)
What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
The Riviera isn't only a sunny place for shady people. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham