Quotes from Somerset Maugham

The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.

You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

The best style is the style you don't notice.

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.

In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.

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

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.