Quotes from W. Somerset Maugham

A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.

There is no more merit in being able to attach a correct description to a picture than in being able to find out what is wrong with a stalled motorcar. In each case it is special knowledge.

The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?

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

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.'

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

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.

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

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.

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

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.

Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

We Americans... like change. It is at once our weakness and our strength.

So long as some are strong and some are weak, the weak will be driven to the wall.

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.

Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.