Quotes from W. Somerset Maugham

Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.

The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.

A soul is a troublesome possession, and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.

Now the answer ... is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.

Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man who isn't quite so delightful but a little more sincere.

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.

No married man's ever made up his mind until he's heard what his wife has got to say about it.

There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.

As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.

I happen to think we've set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.

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.

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.

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

Money is like a sixth sense and you can't make use of the other five without it.

Look after your laundry, and your soul will look after itself.

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.

There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species.

It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.

The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.