Quotes from W. Somerset Maugham

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

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. It is failure that makes people bitter and cruel.

The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.

The nature of men and women - their essential nature - is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.

The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.

The value of money is that with it we can tell any man to go to the devil. It is the sixth sense which enables you to enjoy the other five.

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

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish to bewail it senseless.

There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead they did not seem to belong to the same species and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.

There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.

To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.

To write simply is as difficult as to be good.

Tolerance is another word for indifference.

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

We have long passed the Victorian era, when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.

We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.

We write to-communicat"!

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

You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

Almost all the people who've had the most effect on me I seem to have met by chance, yet looking back it seems as though I couldn't but have met them.

I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible.

Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.